Even From Me
by Kanundrum
Summary: The Ash is out of commission and someone is picking off Light-friendly humans. Dyson is emo, Lauren is overwhelmed, Kenzi thinks they're both weaksauce, and Bo's love life is a dumpster fire  as usual, though she means well. Should update weekly.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Even From Me (1/?)

Author: kanundrum

Fandom: Lost Girl

Pairing and Rating: Bo/Lauren, Lauren/OFC, Kenzi/Hale; R (language, sexual content, violence)

Summary: The Ash is out of commission and someone is picking off Light-friendly humans. Dyson is emo, Lauren is overwhelmed, Kenzi thinks they're both weaksauce, and Bo's love life is a dumpster fire (as usual), though she means well. Will update weekly til done.

Author's Note and Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or anything related to their funny, spooky little section of fake Canada. I'm only playing with them because I really miss my new favorite cheezball supernatural romantic dramedy so darned much. Fair use, eh?

Xx Xx

Just because the Light Fae promote peaceful coexistence between clans and species, some mistakenly think them weak and passive. This is not so; they are merely deliberate and considered before they decree death upon another sentient being.

Unfortunately, a recent suicide bombing carried out by minions of a mentally unbalanced, vengeful succubus killed or severely injured most of the moderate voices on the Light Council of Elders including their leader, the Ash. As he laid comatose and silent two floors above the Council chambers, his so-called allies bickered and fractured over how to respond to a new outbreak of violence. Two of the loudest and most vigorous Elders clamored for Dark blood, proving that even the wisest of Fae are susceptible to panic and poor judgment.

"A single human death is common, two merits notice, but today makes three within a week's time! These murders of our human associates appear to be an organized attack," said Gorrick, a testy Selkie so aged his once super-elastic shapeshifter skin now drooped like a sodden wool sweater. "Since these humans were all key business and financial contacts, it would seem the Dark are taking advantage of the Ash's absence to chip away at our legitimate interests, endangering our very solvency. We must strike back, quickly and with unmistakable intent."

Gorrick's chief ally, a black-eyed Nagi called Vinata, hissed loudly and clapped her scaly hands. Beneath the table, her tail thrashed and rattled like a rain stick. The other Council members muttered and murmured for a time before grudgingly conceding that this theory made sense.

The most committed advocate for restraint had already spoken her piece, but Lauren Lewis, the human doctor who held the Ash's proxy vote, again raised her voice and urged the Council to judge slowly.

"This is against protocol. You're considering violent reprisal against an entire collective before we even know which individuals are to blame," Lauren said. "Fae police agents are investigating-"

"And making no progress," said the Light security chief, Serena - a firestarter in more than one sense. "Dyson and Hale have produced no motives, no suspects, and no credible leads. So far, we're only losing humans, but if we don't get proactive here, we could start taking Fae casualties." Serena paused and showed her palms to Lauren. "No offense intended, Dr. Lewis."

Lauren narrowed her eyes and stiffened her jaw, indicating that she knew better. Affronts to her humanity came rarely these days, but she had absorbed so many slights, insults and outright abuses over the years that her Fae racism detector was now a precision instrument.

"Dyson and Hale are just now heading to this morning's crime scene. I suggest only that you give your own appointed Fae protectors adequate time to do their jobs before you mount some arbitrary offensive against the Dark," she said, taking one last stab at preserving protocol and sanity. "I feel I have represented the will of the Ash. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have clinic patients waiting."

Gorrick and Vinata nodded consent for the doctor to leave the room while the Elders deliberated. As Lauren passed, Serena snapped up a flame between her fingers and pointedly blew out her blazing thumb.

"Subtle," Lauren whispered.

"Forget subtle - these Dark cutthroats are begging for a napalm enema. You'd do well to steer clear of this one, Doc," Serena replied. She held open the door for Lauren, and then locked it behind her.

Lauren paused outside the chamber doors for a moment and collected herself. She knew that worrying about the Council's decision was pointless. Unless police found a suspect unaffiliated with the Dark, there would be Light retribution and possibly another damned war, with all the accompanying horrors.

Human war was bad enough, but violent conflict between Fae was a nightmare. Lauren couldn't have imagined half the tortures these creatures devised, the atrocious ways they maimed and killed each other. In a way, she knew Serena's advice was prudent - she'd learned the hard way that when Fae want to fight, humans should get out of the way and quickly - but she had a duty to represent the Ash and honor his commitment to maintain peace.

Before clinic rounds, Lauren checked on her benefactor and found his condition unchanged, his eyes still closed in aimless slumber, his hands still curled limp on his chest. She took one and squeezed his fingers tightly, feeling a surge of fondness for this powerful, otherworldly being - her de facto owner - which few free humans would be able to understand.

She could hear her nurses making rounds, their footsteps and voices far enough away to assure her privacy. For just a moment, Lauren let her guard drop. She spoke to the Ash in a voice redolent of exhaustion and loneliness. "The Council hawks are beating war drums again," she whispered. "If you can hear me, if you are able, please find your way back. Your people need you."

In truth, she needed him, too. Without the Ash backing her decisions, Lauren knew her position with the Light was tenuous at best, yet there was nowhere else for her to go. The glass fortress, the downtown netherworld and the manifold creatures that populated it, this was her life entire and had been for years. Without his protection, she would be dead and worse... far, far worse.

A brief masochistic urge pricked at her brain, told her to find a clear phone and call her parents or her sister, just to hear a friendly voice say hello, just to remind her that she once had some connection to the world outside this enchanted prison. It was a foolish idea; suicidal, even. She pushed the thought away.

Now there was only one person Lauren could safely call who might give a damn that she was scared or lonely, but she hadn't heard from Bo in several days. That silence hurt more than it should. Thinking about the succubus, with her brash courage, her kindness, her stupefying beauty, and her severe, cutting judgments, was a different level of self-torment. Lauren shook it off and squeezed the Ash's hand tighter.

"We need your strength. I feel like I'm being tested again, and I don't know if I can... just please come back. Just..." she trailed off and almost laughed at her own desperation.

The monitor banks showed no changes in his vital signs. Apparently, her pleas to the Ash were about as effective as her apologies to Bo. The ventilator pumped, the I.V. dripped, and the skylight channeled sun onto his raw, charred skin.

_Air, water, sunlight, and time,_ she mused, _time we may not have._

Lauren patted his hand and walked away with unshed tears in her eyes.

Drifting on another plane of consciousness deep within his healing mind, the Ash could not respond, but he heard his ward. Trapped and isolated, he offered aid in the only way he could: he sent out a psychic call for help, projecting a cry into the duskworld space between light and dark, where the ancient Elex wait dreaming.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

As Kenzi marched ahead of Bo and threw open the front doors of the police station, the succubus almost found enough perspective to be amused by their role reversal. Kenzi usually stayed cool and remote while Bo got emotional and went off half-cocked. The fact that her friend was so indignant on her behalf almost made her smile.

"I don't get why you're getting so worked up. I'm the one that Dyson dumped," Bo said.

"I'm worked up because no louse-ridden dogboy is gonna dump my girl _with a phone call_ and get away unscathed! He deserves some scathing, and you deserve some answers," Kenzi barked, adding a frustrated, breathy huff for emphasis. "Chrissakes, he's treating you like you're Jennifer Aniston or something."

With that, Bo did smile, just a little. She latched onto Kenzi's elbow and let the smaller woman drag her through the lobby, where they waved to their favorite front desk sergeant (Joe Mickens, 57, father of three tween girls and passionate hater of Justin Bieber) and mounted the stairs up to the detective unit.

Dyson happened to be in the hallway fetching his coat when he heard Kenzi's voice echoing up the stairwell. He immediately knew he wasn't ready for what was about to happen. With the aftermath of Aoife's attack, his costly deal with the Norn, and the three high-priority murders, Dyson hadn't had time to prepare himself for an actual face-to-face with Bo.

He took out a pocket flask loaded with Stroh 80 – the 160 proof rum barely made a dent in his high tolerance – and took a deep draught. He rolled his shoulders, as if preparing for a fight, and ducked back into the bullpen.

"You all set?" Hale asked his partner. He checked his gun and phone, made sure he had two fresh sets of nitrile gloves in his jacket. "Crime scene's about twenty minutes away."

"We might be a few minutes late," Dyson warned, just as Kenzi stomped up and jabbed a finger at his chest.

"You, sir, are a scuzzball of John Mayer proportions! You told me - " she stopped suddenly, aware that Bo had just stepped into the room. She looked daggers at Dyson and whispered, "You know what you told me. Words and behavior should be matchy-matchy, or the words don't mean dick. You lied to her for months about her insaniac mother, and then you lied to me about _stuff._ I'm thinking maybe you should just go _lie _on the 401 for a while!"

Kenzi railed away and Dyson just stared at the floor and took it. He wanted to tell Kenzi that his claim to love Bo was true at the time and would be still, if the ancient Norse mistress of fate weren't such a godawful bitch with a hipster's black sense of irony. He offered the old hag his wolf, and she instead reached into his soul and tore loose every shred of passion he felt for Bo, picked him clean except for his memories, which she left hanging like family pictures in an abandoned house.

"Things changed," he said. He looked to Bo, leaning against the doorframe, looking as 'fuck you, I don't care' as she possibly could and even more beautiful than he remembered. "Look, I'm sorry. I lied to you, and if the circumstances were the same, I'd do it again. I still care about you, but you deserve someone who can always put you first, and I've realized I can't do that." Out of words he could safely use, he sighed and shrugged and waited for the succubus to rake him over the coals.

Bo wanted to roll her eyes. No, actually, she wanted to choke Dyson until his eyes rolled back in his head. Instead, she brassed up and held his gaze, looked past his calm demeanor and probed his energy for any sign of the man she knew, the man who once had such an all-consuming passion for her that it felt like genuine love. His aura, often brighter than fire, now appeared dim and cold… which was quite disconcerting.

She wasn't used to seeing someone display such a lack of desire for her. Hell, even the stooped and hostile grandmothers at the Asian market flashed a little twinkle when Bo smiled at them. Not even Dyson's fierce self-discipline could hide love this effectively, which meant there was nothing left in his heart to hide. She knew to a certainty that the man standing before her did not love her, and she couldn't help wondering if everything preceding this moment, all that bright fire, was really nothing more than flash paper.

"I believe you… but I don't understand you. Maybe I never did, and I probably never will," she said, keeping her voice cool and neutral. "If there's one thing I'm learning about Fae, it's that you know how to keep a goddamned secret. You just - you owed me more than a phone call. That's some low-class shit."

Hale, who had crept from the room at the outset of Kenzi's tirade, peered around the corner and tapped his wristwatch. "Hate to break up the party, but we got a cold corpse getting colder. The doc just called, said the Council barely voted us another 48 hours to work this mess."

Though lost in rumination on Dyson's suddenly arctic libido, Bo still registered Hale's mention of one particular word. He said 'doc' and in their world, that meant Lauren Lewis. "What's the case?" she asked Hale.

He looked to Dyson, who offered no protest and waved for Hale to do the explaining. "Past week, three humans with ties to the Light have gone and got themselves killed in very unpretty ways. Forensics found squat, autopsies are incomplete but the results are already crazy, and the Council is screaming that it's an attack by the Dark. Lauren went to bat for us, but some of the geezers want to pull us off the case and set loose the goon squad."

"I thought you guys were the goon squad," Kenzi said.

Hale grinned and tilted up the brim of his black Pescara hat. "Naah. Goons got no style, girl."

Kenzi almost relented, almost smiled back at the charming, dapper Siren. But no; sisters before misters, that was her motto, and at least half the misters in the room were bonafide two-faced jerks. She frowned extra super hard at Dyson. "My opinion stands."

"Sounds like you could use some help with this one," Bo offered, "and, as it happens, our professional investigative services are available. Our schedule is clear today, right, Kenz?"

"And into infinity," Kenzi muttered.

"Can't pay ya," Hale said. "Department says no cash for consultants or informants 'til next budget year."

"I'll go pro bono - for Lauren," Bo said, rather pointedly. Three sets of confused and/or suspicious eyes fell upon her. She quirked her lips and explained, "I owe her. She really went out on a limb for me, helped me with my mom."

Hale seemed receptive, but he gave his partner the courtesy of first refusal. Dyson ground his teeth and swallowed a lump of something that used to be rancor, but now tasted more like straight-up envy. "I don't have a problem with that," he lied.

Bo slapped her hands together and shot him a sickly grin. "Good to know. We'll follow you to the scene," she said, and snagged the sleeve of her partner in crime. "Come on, Snooki."

Kenzi rapped her knuckles against her chest, shook her magenta bob, and glowered at Dyson as she walked backward from the room. "This ain't over. You lucky I just had my hair did, son."

"Looking good, too, lil mama," Hale called after her.

Once they were safely alone, Dyson unclenched his jaw and said to his beaming, moonstruck partner, "You know that's a wig, right?"

"Man, I don't even care," said Hale. "Gimme the keys. You brood, I drive."

TBC


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

The drive to the crime scene took only twenty minutes, give or take a stoplight, but it seemed longer to Bo. She stared ahead at the brake lights of Dyson's dark sedan and wondered what she'd done to make him back away from what seemed a very promising relationship.

That spiel about her deserving someone without divided loyalties? Bo wasn't buying it for a second. Still, even if Dyson's motives remained murky, two truths were now crystal clear: he really didn't want her anymore, and the stoic bastard had no intention of explaining why. Oddly, the not knowing why bothered Bo more than the actual dumping. If only she could figure out what she'd done to make him lose faith in her, stop trusting her, it might make the ache a little more bearable.

Without warning, Kenzi quit fiddling with their jalopy's almost-broken radio and dealt a smart punch to her upper arm.

"Oww! God!" Bo glanced at her, confused and miffed. "The hell was that for?"

"You gotta knock it off. The smacking sounds of your self-flagellation are drowning out this lousy college rock station," Kenzi explained. "I must know why the wailing boy singer is so angry at his daddy."

"Sorry," Bo said. "I'll try to torment myself more quietly."

"Better yet, turn the whip on Officer K-9." Kenzi propped a boot on the dash and pretended to adjust one of a dozen shiny buckles. "You were willing to forgive him for some pretty heinous truth-hiding, and now he's all, 'Oh, you're awesome and whatev, but I can't put you above my precious loyalty to bobloblaw.'"

"Fealty," Bo said. "I think the Fae call it fealty."

"Bullshit by any other name…" Kenzi replied.

Bo sighed and recalled a time when Lauren and Dyson nearly argued about the weight of that word. Bo had flattered herself that they postured and growled over her, but maybe their respective Fae entanglements trumped any romantic rivalry over a troublemaking, unaligned succubus.

Though she almost understood Dyson's ingrained loyalties (he was hundreds of years old, after all, and remained welded to Trick like iron to iron), the reasons for Lauren's Light Fae fealty remained unknown. She was a human slave, property of the Ash, and yet so trusted that she was allowed to wield real power in his name. Bo realized that she still didn't comprehend their strange guardian/ward dynamic at all.

_Probably because you never let her explain, you ass, _she thought.

She changed lanes and made another turn; they were about halfway to their murder victim's midtown address. "I'm not 100% sure what fealty means to Fae," Bo continued, "but from where I'm sitting, it reads like loss of free will. Therefore, it sucks and I don't want any, thank you very much."

"Amen, sister! Preach!" Kenzi smiled and stomped the dash. "Incidentally, using the f-word as an excuse to cut and run is weak, right? I mean, you were the wronged party, and you were willing to listen to him and try working things out. That's pretty frikkin' mature – especially coming from you."

"True," Bo conceded, smirking at the backhanded compliment.

She recalled (with a smidgen of shame) how violently her own force fields had repelled Lauren's apologies after their one lovely, disastrous night together. It wasn't that she didn't want to hear the doctor's explanations; she simply feared that listening might make her forgive, might open her up to another hurtful betrayal – which she wound up experiencing anyway, thanks to Mr. Reliable Safe Choice Dyson.

"Don't you hate it when the universe keeps ramming hot buttered karma down your throat?" Bo complained.

"And how," Kenzi agreed. "Since we can't fix the stupid universe, may I direct your attention to the silver lining of your dumpage?"

"Oh, please do."

"If Dyson is too scared to even test the waters with a prime piece of supernatural ass like you…"

Bo snorted. "Flatterer."

"Then there's other fish in the sea," Kenzi went on. "Better fish, even. Hot, rich fish with vacation homes and stock portfolios. You could cast one of those industrial-sized nets and pull in a shit-ton of prime prospects! Rock star fish! Professional athlete fish! Lawyer fish!"

"Doctor fish," Bo casually added.

Kenzi inferred her meaning and went all scowly. "Veto. Doctor fish are really bad for you. They're, like, full of those little poison sacs -"

"But if you're careful and prepare them properly, they're a delicacy," Bo said, and circled her fingers in the air – a vague gesture that she managed to make genuinely filthy. "It's all in the technique."

Kenzi faked retching and shook her head. "Please. Spare me the deets," she begged.

Bo smacked her lips and flashed a saucy grin. "_Delicacy_. I'm just sayin'."

"Shut-it, pervo. And I'm telling you – nay, ordering you – to keep your knees shut around that woman," Kenzi blustered. "Rebound sex should be safe and simple. The last time you rolled around with that chick, she flash-fried your heart."

"Wow. I didn't realize you had so many feelings about this."

"Honey, I have eyewitness memories. You did nothing but guzzle Patron, play with swords and pick fights until you and Dyson started up again. You wouldn't speak to Lauren for weeks! You couldn't bear to be in the same room with her!" Kenzi argued. "And the very moment you made peace with the crazy-B, she broke a ton of Fae rules for you, and kissed you stupid right in the middle of Aoife-geddon!"

The succubus raised a brow. "Aoife-geddon?"

"It was either that or Rag-mom-rok," Kenzi said, shrugging off her own terrible puns. "Back on topic: Lauren is no better for you than Dyson and might even be way more dangerous."

"Whoa, rewind - you just said how she came through for me, how she broke Fae rules and helped me when I needed her -"

"That's my point, babe; you and the wolfman had heat, and I think you really did care about each other, but you're not running away from him, not drinking yourself sick over him. You're sad and pissed-off, but you're coping. Meanwhile, with just one bonk under your belt, you and the fascist with pretty hair made each other Zoloft-level miserable."

"Kenzi! Jesus," Bo moaned. "Lauren is _not_ a fascist."

"Please. The girl's got so much shady political baggage, there's probably an airport-sized carousel in her living room."

Bo just shook her head. She wasn't equipped to fight Kenzi on her own hyper-verbal terrain. "You're really in rare form today. Like, right-wing radio host form."

Kenzi relented, gave her friend a sincere smile and a pat on the shoulder. "I don't mean to be a c-unit. I just know that if you jump into something with Lauren, it will not end pretty," she said. "Trust me - find yourself some beautiful, rich idiot with no connection to the monster squad, screw 'em bow-legged and roll away in a new Benz. And get me a Mini Coop while you're at it."

The police sedan signaled and pulled over in front of a swanky apartment building, and Bo parked about half a block ahead. She cut the engine and pulled her best friend into a tight hug. After a few seconds, Kenzi squirmed away and gave her a questioning look.

"Thanks for caring," Bo said. "You're the best bad influence a girl could ask for."

Kenzi seemed taken aback by her sincerity. "Does this mean you're going to listen to me for once?"

Bo smiled, but didn't answer. She bolted off toward the crime scene. Kenzi slowly exited the car and trudged after her friend, wondering where she got the idea that she could correct Bo's course with mere words. Even a silver-tongued con like Kenzi couldn't talk Bo out of chasing trouble.

She entered the apartment building lobby and joined Bo and their Fae cop escorts in the elevator. Nobody made eye contact with anyone else, and the eighteen-floor ride up to the penthouse was spent in complete silence. Not even Hale said anything, leading Kenzi to wonder how awkward and yucky his car ride with Dyson had been. Maybe she'd ask him later.

A soft bell dinged and the lift doors opened. Kenzi had barely set foot in the victim's posh living room before the smell hit her – the metallic stench of spilled blood. A white sofa showed a wide swash of dark red, and the matching white carpets were fouled with bits of wet, pulpy gore. Squicked, she turned away and sought solace in the media center, with its obscenely large flat screen television mounted high on the wall like the centerpiece of an altar.

Kenzi peered through a glass cabinet door at an array of pricey Onkyo AV equipment and calculated that her fence could net her two grand for the receiver alone. Her fingers started to itch. She looked for Bo and the po-po and saw them duck into a bedroom to view the victim's body. They were chatting in hushed tones about building security and paying her no attention whatsoever.

She dropped to one knee, intending to scout for any cable locks on the AV rack, and found instead a set of wide and empty eye sockets peering at her from beneath the cabinet. A mouth, opened in a mute, grotesque scream, gaped at her. Kenzi saw there was no tongue in that mouth… and no body attached to that mutilated head.

She yelped, just once, and skittered backward across the marble tiled floor. She called for Bo, who was at her side in a flash. Hale squatted in front of the AV rack and peered underneath.

"We got the head," he called out to the Crime Scene techs. He patted Kenzi's knee and smiled. "Good get, slick. They been looking for this all morning."

Kenzi shuddered and curled against Bo. "I am begging you," she whispered, "please find us a sugar daddy. Or momma. This detective thing is so jacked-up."

Bo hugged her a bit tighter. "So what's next?" she asked the cops.

Dyson shouldered a bag full of papers and media, and tucked in the case file and a digital camera loaded with crime scene pics. His voice was low and confidential. "We make copies of everything, leave the originals with the police and give the copies to the Fae labs for analysis."

"I can take them," Bo volunteered. "The copies. I'll take them to the labs."

Dyson's jaw twitched. "Can't let you do that," he said. "Breaks the chain of evidence."

Bo shrugged. "Okay, so I'll just tag along. I need to see the other files anyway, right?" She stood and helped Kenzi up, then walked straight to the elevator.

"Guess I can't stop you," Dyson murmured, following her out.

Hale and Kenzi looked at each other, and the Siren blew out a nervous breath. "This is gonna get ugly, huh?"

"Decapitation-ugly," Kenzi confirmed. As they got in the lift, she glanced back at the AV rack and bumped Hale with her elbow. "Hey, what happens to the victim's stuff? Does he have family? Do any of them look even vaguely like me?"

Hale shook his head and called her a stone-cold mercenary. The elevator ride down was, again, deathly quiet.

TBC


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

By mid-morning, Lauren literally had her hands full and then some, with her left balancing two thick lab reports atop a clipboard, her right toting a jumbo thermos, and her teeth clenching a cinched velvet bag. She crossed the open lab theater, carefully side-stepped an inattentive lab tech (Boston Sharon the grouchy Harpy, not to be confused with Guatemala Sharon the gracious Balam), and angled into a curtained bay where her patient was getting dressed.

Perhaps because she was so very tired, for the second time that morning her professionalism faltered. Lauren blushed and averted her eyes. The patient, a buxom water nymph named Justine, only chuckled. A Light security operative prone to broken fingers and strange allergic reactions, she had become one of Lauren's favorite (and most frequent) patients.

"_Quel boulot pépère!__"_ she teased, wriggling into a snug cashmere sweater dress and belting the waist with a strip of soft leather. She twisted her honeyed brown hair into a loose knot and smiled warmly. "Let us exchange duties. Lauren will go into the field and get sick while Justine drinks coffee and sees the naked bodies all day."

Lauren stacked her burdens on a rolling table, leaned against the bedrail and sighed. "Deal. It's so _boring _around here lately," she said, causing the nymph to laugh again at her eye-rolling sarcasm. She opened a folder and deciphered some test results. "Good news; the chelating therapy has been very successful. X-rays show no heavy metals in your major organs -"

"Ahh! I'm not dying!" Justine grabbed Lauren's shoulders and gave her a joyous shake. "Thank you! My mother will be so disappointed!"

Lauren scrunched her brows. "Disappointed?"

"Oh, yes. The old whale has always said she will outlive me. Yesterday, she bought a costly black gown and everything. Ha!"

"Well, I hope she lost the receipt," Lauren quipped. "Although, you're bound to prove her right if you keep bathing in industrial runoff ponds. Even your resilient physiology can't process repeated exposure to such high levels of chromium."

"But I had no choice! That _salop_ Gael never came to relieve me. I was stuck at that damned factory, and the fevers had begun," the nymph explained.

Lauren knew water nymphs required full body immersion in clean water at least every three days. Without a good soak, their electrolyte levels plummeted and their core temperature rose rapidly. Gael, the spoiled bully son of Council Elder Gorrick, was evidently falling down on the job as a Light security operative.

"If I abandoned my surveillance, Serena would roast me alive," Justine added. "Poof. Ashes. Happy mama."

"Look, I know Serena can be very demanding. I'm not telling you how to do your job, I'm only suggesting precaution. Keep saline packs with you for emergencies." Lauren gave her a kindly smile. "Please? Doctor's orders."

Justine stepped closer, edging into Lauren's personal space. Her lilting voice dropped into a low, sultry register. "If I comply, will I be rewarded?"

Amused but unfazed by the advance, Lauren opened the white velvet bag and extracted two stainless steel eggs. She displayed these shining curiosities in her palm, and the nymph's wide green eyes lit with mischief.

"_Pour moi?"_ Justine asked, and tapped one heavy egg with a short, neat fingernail. "I have a notion, yet I am unsure. Perhaps you will teach me where they belong?"

The bay was quiet then, except for the sound of footsteps and blurred voices beyond the curtain. Lauren let the flirtation turn elastic, stretched the moment for as long as she could. For those few seconds, she shirked her taxing responsibilities and recalled what it was like to feel easy and light, like a desired woman instead of a crowned pawn.

Without breaking eye contact, Lauren reached for the thermos, popped the lid, and eased both eggs into the steaming, pitch-colored tea.

Justine tipped her head back and groaned. "My notion was infinitely better," she said.

"I've no doubt," Lauren replied. "Mine is good, too, though - this medicinal tea is the last phase of your treatment. The steel eggs are filled with a proprietary phase change material which regulates temperature. Two of these should keep the tea at a steady 140 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours. Maintaining the temperature over a slow period of absorption will increase efficacy."

Justine shook her head and smiled at the spurt of technobabble. "Science. Always the science."

Lauren handed over the lidded thermos and made a serious doctor face. "Sip the tea slowly for the next few hours, and then you're all done. Oh, and don't be alarmed if your urine is green."

Justine turned a bit green at the prospect, but did not complain. "What of my balls?" she inquired. "Must I return them now?"

"Yes," Lauren said, "I will need those back."

From her handbag, Justine produced a shielded glass box containing a lump of tiny black antiferromagnetic spheres. Glumly, she surrendered them to her doctor. "I placed the used ones in the red bin outside, as you said. I liked my magic balls. Such good little soldiers."

"They served their purpose. The exchange bias charge helped draw the chromium so you could..."

"Poop out the poisons?"

"Evacuate the contaminants," Lauren said gently. She set the horribly expensive experimental magnets aside and signed Justine's discharge form. "Give this to Sharon and tell her I want you back for a check-up in six weeks."

"Uff. Which Sharon?"

"Guatemala Sharon."

"_Bon, d'accord_." Justine folded the discharge slip into her handbag, turned, and paused. Her fingers plucked at her mouth as though trying to coax out shy words. "Before you go, I have another notion..."

Lauren took a deep breath. Her shoulders tensed as she braced against the bedrail. Justine gazed at her, somewhat pensive yet freshly determined. They didn't notice the soft footfalls which stopped right outside their patient bay, just where the curtains gapped like a small porthole.

"In three days, I cross the border and resume my duties," Justine said. "Until then, I wait alone at my father's villa. It's very private. There is too much wine and food... a warm salt water pool… and a vast, cold featherbed."

It seemed almost like a cruel joke, the offer of respite and comfort when she needed it most, when she couldn't possibly accept it. The first words out of her mouth were the last words Lauren wanted to say. "I can't."

Undeterred, Justine clasped Lauren's shoulders and breathily pleaded for her very life. "But you are my doctor. You took an oath to do no harm, and yet you would have me freeze to death in that bed?"

"Sleep in the pool."

"I might drown?"

"That's a biological impossibility. You - your order - you can breathe soup," Lauren stammered. Justine was getting too damned close and Lauren was getting nervous. Somehow, her hands had found Justine's waist, and that cashmere sweater felt as soft and warm as a Christmas kitten. She looked up at the ceiling and prayed for strength. "Not chunky soup, of course. Something creamy. Carrot ginger. Please stop trying to get me in trouble."

"Believe me, that is not my intention," Justine said. She leaned close and whispered by Lauren's ear. "_Je sais que tu n'aimes pas ta réalité_. I can help you forget, if only for a couple of days. Come with me."

Lauren hesitated, nearly wavered. "I'm needed here."

Justine read the subtext of that refusal and didn't miss a beat. "Everyone tells me the Ash will not wake soon. He would not bind you to an endless bedside vigil, nor see you grow ill and weak from the effort to act in his stead. Forgive my words, but you _are_ only human. To disregard your own wellness is to reject his care and trust."

"I suppose," Lauren murmured. "The Ash's health aside, there are other reasons. You know there's a situation developing with the Council. I have to try and contain it."

"Hubris and futility," Justine argued. "Those primeval idiots do as they please. You cannot clean fear and loathing from their minds as you flushed the poisons from my body. The Ash is their appointed _voix de paix_, and he is silent. If you stand between the Council and its goal, they will dismiss you. What then for you?"

What then, indeed. That was a question Lauren couldn't let herself dwell on, because the answers ranged from bleak to downright hellish. Maybe it _was_ hubris keeping her tethered to work, a misguided belief that she was indispensible. On the other hand, if she abandoned her passionate advocacy for the Ash, even for a couple of days, the Council might deem Lauren's proxy vote a mere ceremonial hindrance. If that happened, she truly was done for.

Justine touched her chin, guided Lauren's attention back to her tabled offer. "Pack a small bag, or don't. I have all we need. We will rest and heal and return stronger," she insisted. "Come away with me."

Lauren was flattered – moved, really – by Justine's persistent concern. Part of her really did want to surrender, to find solace in Justine's body, to feel weightless in that salt pool and heat every inch of that vast featherbed. As much as she craved the relief of temporary amnesia, she simply couldn't fold now and let the chips fall where they may. She was prepared to deliver a definitive 'no' when a grating voice, familiar and unexpected, cut in and drowned her out.

"Lauren? Quit malingering and get out here!" Kenzi called, whipping open the bay curtains and marching in like she owned the joint.

As the curtain rolled back, Bo came into view. The succubus was biting her bottom lip and staring at her boots. From her rigid posture, it appeared she had been standing still for quite some time.

Lauren went ashen and edged away from Justine. The nymph, sensing tension, gathered her things and gave Lauren a peck on the cheek. "You know where to find me," she said, and slipped out.

In the background, Kenzi poked around and plundered the medical bay and Lauren didn't even notice. She was focused entirely on Bo, on her odd, wounded expression. "I didn't know you were here," she said.

"Forgot to wear my bell." Bo shuffled her feet. Her ankles gave a faint, tell-tale crack.

Lauren moved a little closer and gave her a quick once-over, scanning for injuries. "Are you hurt?"

"Hurt? No! Of course not," Bo replied. She looked away and stuffed her hands deep into her jacket pockets. "You can date whoever you want. None of my business."

Bewildered as she was, Lauren needed a few seconds to back-track the miscommunication and contrast Bo's words with her body language. Once that happened, she almost smiled.

Kenzi, however, did not smile. "Yo, this visit is totally police business," she announced, snapping her fingers for attention. "We're the advance team for Dyson and Hale. We got three murders to solve and your snotty minions won't cough up the files."

With a resigned sigh, Lauren took up her clipboard and readied herself to rejoin the fight. There would be no rest today. "You know, I told my snotty minions to stop eating case files," Lauren deadpanned, drawing a wan smile from Bo. "I even sent a memo."

"Which they also ate," Bo added. She looked up, finally met Lauren's eyes, and felt a rush of relief when she found the familiar glow of affection and regard still there, and still strong.

As she passed, Lauren touched her elbow and whispered, "I'm glad you're here," and Bo couldn't help believing her. She stood there cultivating a pot-faced smile until Kenzi started chanting "veto, veto" and harshed her buzz.

"Sidekicks do not have veto power," Bo gently reminded her, and went to find Lauren.

"I'll filibuster, then," Kenzi said, "'cause I can talk, baby, I can talk 'til the cows come home, and I'm a man of action which means I don't eavesdrop and get all butt-hurt, I do shit and I have laser beam focus and nothing will distract me from accomplishing my goal of – Ooh! Buckyballs!"

Kenzi's itchy fingers picked up the glass box of high-potency magnetic medical spheres and stuffed it into her shoulder bag… where it promptly erased all data from her phone and girded itself in chain mail armor of paper clips, hairpins, and three broken Hello Kitty lock picks.

TBC


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

"I have digital copies of everything loaded into the mainframe, but you might want to go over my hard copies first, just to familiarize yourself," Lauren offered.

"Sounds like a plan," Bo said, and watched with interest as Lauren cleared off an equipment table in a secluded area of the lab and laid out two handsome leather ring binders.

Each binder contained detailed information on a brutal murder, yet the packaging was strikingly civilized. Both were labeled on the cover and spine with a name, date, and incident extract. Inside, dozens of plastic-sleeved pages were partitioned with colored tabs denoting 'Victim Profile' or 'Crime Scene Images' or, in one grossly specific instance, 'Postmortem Mutilation (high res).'

Bo's eyes widened and she bit her lip, trying not to comment on the doctor's efforts to tidy this horrifying mess. Lauren saw this and blushed like she'd been caught red-handed at felony nerding.

"I know. Go on, get it out of your system," she said, and braced herself for mockery.

"CSI: Martha Stewart," Bo blurted. "Order and Law. Hawaii Five-OCD."

"Okay, _stop_. Mercy," Lauren said, wincing. "Clearly, Kenzi has trained you well."

"Oh, yeah, she's a regular drill sergeant. If I'm too slow with the jokes, she makes me brush out her wigs," Bo said, and this finally made Lauren smile.

Bo traced her finger across a binder's tooled leather cover, riffled the pages and saw gory photos mixed with spreadsheets and CAD scene recreations. "Seriously, this should be full of recipes, not dead guy stuff."

"This is my preferred archival format for dead guy stuff," Lauren admitted. "For recipes, I use four-by-six index cards. It's a more efficient system."

Bo instantly brightened. "Get out! You cook?" She was surprised by this information, though she had very little trouble imagining the doctor trading her starched lab coat for an equally pristine apron, along with some vintage pearls, high heels, seamed nylons... Bo was suddenly reminded that, although she ate breakfast that morning, she hadn't _fed_ in several days. Kitchen playtime fantasies weren't helping, so she tried to clean the image out of her mind.

"I do indeed cook. Once re-framed as a subset of chemistry, it wasn't really that hard to teach myself," Lauren replied. She glanced down, tucked a stray lock of hair behind her ear. "It's one of many hobbies. In between crises, I have a lot of time on my hands."

The implication wasn't lost on Bo. That blue tint of isolation and loneliness was one of the first things she noticed about Lauren, once she'd engaged her in actual conversation rather than simply peering down her shirt and hitting her up for free medicine.

"Well, maybe if I help solve these cases, you could pay me back with a meal?" Bo suggested, tilting her head and looking uncertain. "Which I would prefer to eat with you, if that's… you know… possible… agreeable. I don't know."

"That's… yeah." Lauren blinked slowly; her eyes seemed unfocused and distant. "It's actually easier to cook for two."

"More kitchen help?" Bo wondered.

Lauren leaned against the table and shook her head. "Fewer recipe adjustments."

"Oh. Right." Bo appreciated Lauren's logic, but she was hoping for an overt cue that the woman really wanted to spend some time together. An outburst of delight was probably too much to ask, but a little enthusiasm would do wonders for Bo's wandering confidence. Upon closer inspection, Lauren looked quite tired, with dark crescents below her eyes, shoulders rounded into a half slump, and her cheeks drawn and pale. "Hey, are you feeling okay?"

The doctor assumed a passive, flat smile. "Honestly, I don't know. It's not yet noon, and this has already been a very slippery day. I feel like I can't get my footing."

"So you're saying this is the _perfect_ time to ask you out."

Lauren gave a hollow chuckle. She inhaled, squinted, breathed out a question. "Are you still seeing Dyson?"

"No," Bo instantly answered. "We broke up."

Lauren nodded. "Whose idea was that?"

Bo chewed her bottom lip for a second, wondering how to explain something she barely understood herself. "Mine, kind of, to start with. Then he agreed, with gusto, and that was that, I guess."

"Sounds a bit open-ended," Lauren observed.

"It's not," Bo assured her. "It's just… ended."

She tried to glean a reaction from Lauren's placid expression, tried to read her energy, but everything had gone blurry and vague. Maybe Lauren had other things – or other people – on her mind. "What about you? Are you seeing that q-bec bra model?"

"I'm sorry?" Lauren seemed lost for a moment, until 'q-bec' triggered 'Québecoise' and recognition dawned. "You mean Justine? Oh, no, we aren't… no. She's a patient."

"Do all your patients try to sweep you away to hot tub villas for wine and sex therapy?"

"Sure, happens all the time." Lauren grinned, managing to make weary and smug add up to cute. "Some even offer professional services in exchange for dinner dates."

Bo opened her mouth to malign those uncouth players, only to realize she was in their number. She glared and rolled her eyes. "Wow. The nerve…"

"I know," Lauren agreed.

They laughed a little. Sighs and smiles turned to easy silence. Their eyes met and held and there was something good in the quiet, something hopeful, a feeling that broken things could be repaired, with care and time.

"You still owe me that talk," Lauren said.

Bo feigned confusion. "I thought this was the talk."

Lauren leaned closer and whispered. "There are things I want you to know, but if I tried to explain just now, I'd wreck it." She drew a slow breath and blinked lazily. "I am not articulate when under stress, if you recall."

Blurted secrets, halting explanations, choked apologies – Bo remembered Lauren clutching a bed sheet across her chest, struggling to find words that might keep their fragile tie from unraveling. Bo didn't have that problem; when wounded, the venom sprang off her tongue with ease, and she had tried to even the score with Lauren through terse, biting cruelty.

Calloused from ten years of emotional solitude and scores of hollowed-out lovers (mostly criminals the world would not miss), it took a lot for Bo to really feel hurt by someone's behavior. Lauren had managed that feat without even really trying, and her fumbling, doe-eyed sincerity afterwards had made Bo irrationally angry.

Maybe Kenzi was right, that the real danger of being with Lauren was less about the Ash and the Light Fae and more about how deftly she could get through Bo's defenses. From early on, Dyson's affection had surged and ebbed like the tide, knocking down walls and then giving Bo time to fortify again. Lauren, on the other hand, had simply knocked on the gate and asked to come in. Bo realized she deserved a share of the blame for what happened, since she was the chump who gave an all-access pass to a virtual stranger with a hidden agenda.

_No one is an open book__,_ she thought. _Me, Kenzi, Dyson…everyone keeps secrets. Not everyone has the decency to explain why, or the patience to wait out your fear. _

"I think maybe I'm ready to listen," Bo said. "We can try it when you're not dead on your feet."

Lauren groaned softly. "It shows, huh?"

Bo frowned and made a sympathetic noise. She wanted to give Lauren something more than words, something tangible that might ease her mind and lighten her load. The Ash vault key and the Koushang amulet would be ideal, but those were locked up at the crack shack. When she left home this morning, she hadn't expected to wind up at the Fae labs.

Bo did have something to offer, though, something she carried wherever she went. The succubus dipped her chin and reached for Lauren's hand. The doctor regarded her curiously, but did not resist. Bo linked their fingers, summoned a pulse of power from her depleted stores, and pushed that energy into Lauren.

The instant the chi hit her system, Lauren's eyes fell shut and her breath caught in her throat. Her skin pinked, muscles relaxed, and she melted forward like a boneless thing, exhaling heat across Bo's neck.

On instinct, the contact became a loose embrace. On instinct, Bo lowered her face – just a fractional turn - and inhaled the clean scent of Lauren's hair. Her pulse quickened. Her eyelids grew heavy. At that point, the succubus realized she had misjudged her situation.

Bo had much more experience taking energy than giving it away, and it was still a matter of guessing how much chi any individual human could safely absorb. While sending her chi into someone else's body was less intimate than gorging on their life essence, it was still a sensual act and it usually piqued her desire to feed – even when she was sated, or with someone she didn't particularly want. Today, the circumstances were not optimal for self control.

Pressed against Lauren's body, supple and solid as a warm bed, Bo felt her hunger swell and kick to get loose. She gritted her teeth and pushed away from Lauren, who looked up at her and gasped. Bo knew without being told that her eyes had gone from dark brown to neon blue. They stared at each other, stuck in the moment, oblivious to the approach of others.

"I'm so sorry," they said in unison, and if Bo hadn't been in libido hell, she would have laughed.

Kenzi, Hale and Dyson rounded the corner and stopped short, taking stock of the situation. Bo stood there with her eyes on fire, flexing her fists and trying not to hyperventilate.

Dyson met her gaze just once and looked away. Hale was blinking like he'd seen a paisley elephant. Kenzi just crossed her arms and scowled.

"What?" Bo said to the silent trio. "Is there spinach in my teeth?"

Lauren cleared her throat and tried to catch up to the problem. "I've tweaked the amino acid balance in your treatment. Maybe that will help," she said to Bo, and departed with a newly springy gait.

Once the doctor had vanished, Kenzi pointed at Bo and spoke from the heart. "You? Are a dumbass."

Bo threw her arms wide and stalked toward them. "What can I say? It's been a very slippery day."

Without warning, she grabbed Dyson by his vest, yanked him into a punishing, abysmal kiss, and sucked loose every bit of stray energy she could find. After only a few seconds of Bo's deadly hunger clawing down his throat, Dyson hit his knees and fell into a coughing fit.

As her blue eyes went dark, Bo took a deep, calming breath. She clouted Dyson on the back until he stopped coughing. He looked up at her with the strangest expression, as if he was actually hurt that she would use him in such a way, even though feeding on his Fae energy had been the original keystone in their relationship. Bo didn't know what to make of his reaction, but she was certain that looking for the truth would be a fool's errand.

"We're all square for that shitty phone call break-up," she said, and patted him on the shoulder. She clapped her hands and smiled at Kenzi and Hale. "Hey, kids! Who feels like solving some murders?"

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

Lauren returned pretty quickly with a dose of synthesized "appetite suppressant" and scooted Bo off to the treatment area. Hale, Kenzi, and a somewhat unsteady Dyson moved into a small, glassed conference room containing several padded stools, one blade server enclosure and a crazily outsized LCD display – a custom-made touch screen measuring 126 inches on the diagonal.

"Sweet fancy motherboards! You've stolen Steve Jobs' casket!" Kenzi exclaimed. When Hale snickered and observed that this treasure might actually be too big for Kenzi to nick, she tried way, way too hard to look offended; there was audible gasping and some delicate daubing of the neckline for effect.

Hale smiled and shook his head. "Nuh-uh. Not buying that act."

Kenzi dropped the coy act and cheerfully flipped him off. "Saving your money for more hats?" she teased, and moved in to examine the monitor's liquid cooling tubes, pristine steel bezel and flawless reactive glass surface.

"This is some truly badass, one-off hardware. Probably cost a fortune to… oh, crap." The matter of price led to a realization, one that soured Kenzi's candy-coated tech joy. "Dudes, please tell me Lauren's not rich."

"Depends what you mean by rich," Dyson said. He opened a peripheral panel on the monitor, loaded the new case data from SDHC card copies and powered up the display. "She signs the checks for the entire science division and holds the Ash's financial proxy, which carries access to all commercially invested Light Fae assets."

"If she had a mind to, the doc could go full Bernie Madoff with our retirement accounts," added Hale. "Speaking of – you copy those 401k ledgers?"

Dyson winced and shook his head. The oversight was unlike him, a reminder that he was still off his game. "Not yet. The originals are locked in the car," he said. Hale didn't comment, just jingled the keys and jogged off to retrieve the missing records.

"So in addition to being frosty, bossy, and filled with succubus catnip, the bitch is loaded." Kenzi, regretting that she hadn't placed a 'no Lauren' clause in her prayer for Bo to find a sugar momma, moaned and looked skyward. "I know you're God and all, but what were you thinking?"

"The gods may know why the Ash gives her a free hand," Dyson said, "but they aren't talking."

He glanced through the glass wall toward the treatment area, where Lauren was prepping Bo for an injection. She rubbed an alcohol wipe in slow circles on Bo's bare shoulder and the succubus pretended to flinch from the cold. Lauren tugged on her wrist, chided her with a wagging finger. They both smiled.

At first sight, the interaction seemed innocent and playful, but as Dyson looked between the touches and stillness, he perceived a gentle crackling of energy. A hollowed, nauseous sensation invaded his chest. Ghosting through his mind was an instinct to act, to bare his fangs and roar for Lauren to keep her hands off Bo… yet that roar was just an echo, smoke from a smothered fire. When he turned away, he found Kenzi staring razors at his face.

"Don't look so shocked," she said. "Bo won't waste time licking her wounds, not when there's a trained medical professional willing to do it for her."

He blinked, looked down, tried hard not to conjure that image. "I don't expect her to -"

"Let me tell you what to expect: a big _frikkin'_ train wreck. The Lauren & Bo Express is leaving the station, and if you wanna derail it, you better locomote."

"I don't want to…" Dyson drew a careful breath and tried to give her some little sliver of the truth. "Remember when you were sick, poisoned? You made me promise that I would always have Bo's back, even if that meant cutting her loose. Right now, I have nothing to give her but a clean break." He glanced back at the treatment area, where Lauren was taking Bo's pulse. "How Bo moves on is up to her."

"But you can't let her move on to _that_!" Kenzi insisted, pointing at the pair under debate. "You kept telling Bo not to trust Lauren because she was too close to the Ash!"

"I still believe that." Dyson looked around, lowered his voice. "Look, the good Dr. Lewis and I have never liked each other, and butting heads over Bo made it worse. I don't know Lauren's past, I can't guess her motives. I do know that getting close to her puts Bo in danger. For better or worse, she is the Ash's right hand, and many Fae resent taking orders from a human. It's not natural."

Somehow, that blunt statement circumvented her feelings about Lauren and scraped at Kenzi's temper. Normally, she tried not to think about how many of the Fae encircling her life were actually predators that saw humans as toys, chattel, or even food. Ignoring the truth allowed her to sleep at night – that, and knowing Bo was in the next room with a big shotgun.

"How much resentment are we talking about? Like, enough to kill her or something?" Kenzi wondered.

He didn't get the chance to reply before Lauren, Bo, and Hale filed in. By way of an answer, Dyson widened his eyes at Kenzi, as if to say he didn't really know.

Hale handed Lauren the retirement account ledgers, which Bo regarded like a pile of ripe diapers. "You didn't say there'd be math."

"No worries; me and the doc go over the books," Hale said, tilting his head at Lauren. "I took a quick turn at the numbers. This one's just like the first two."

"Meaning all entries related to Light Fae investments and transactions have mysteriously vanished." Lauren furrowed her brow. "The pattern seems to support Elder Gorrick's suspicions of a Dark maneuver, but it's still not enough to go offensive. Our game plan is the same: stop these killings and defend our assets. I met with our attorneys last night; all holdings are either frozen or liquefied and moved to emergency positions."

"My retirement account thanks you," said Hale. He turned and checked with his partner. "We ready for show and tell?"

Dyson muttered a 'yeah' sound and touched the monitor glass, bringing up three image folder icons. Lauren keyed a number pad by the conference room door, and the glass walls frosted over for privacy. Dyson nodded to Hale, and the Siren took the lead. He tapped one folder icon and the giant screen exploded with thumbnail digital photographs of blood-soaked rooms and savaged flesh.

Someone let out a weak grunt and all eyes fell on Bo. The succubus, plainly appalled by the photos, was perched on a stool and rubbing her shoulder. Due to the new formulation, her shot injection site was burning worse than usual.

"I'm _fine_. I had a snack and some medicine and I'm feeling much better now," Bo said, and waved at the screen. "What the hell are we looking at?"

"Victim the first: James Orman, 51, bond broker and all-around financial whiz," Hale replied. "He managed three funds owned by Light shell companies and grew them by 80% over two years. Found dead four days ago in his weekend house on a lakefront golf course. Decapitated, eyes and tongue removed post-mortem."

Hale tapped one photo, which swelled to fill the screen with an oval of white sand and verdant grass, marred by a grisly centerpiece. "Security guard found Orman's head in a sand trap," he said.

"Some security he turned out to be," Bo scoffed.

"Richie Bostic. Skinny nineteen year-old kid, rides around in a golf cart with a can of pepper spray," Dyson clarified.

Kenzi looked queasy, but gave the image her full attention. Something about the dead guy's features evidently struck her as odd. "Why does he have little mouse ears? Was he inbred or something?" she asked. In response, Bo thumped her neck, which Kenzi did not enjoy. "Oi! I'm Veronica Mars-ing, here!"

"Straighten up or I'll cancel you," Bo warned.

Lauren approached the screen and craned her head in close. She touched the image corners and pulled wide, zooming in on the horror show face – gapped eyes, hollow mouth, and pinched tissue around the clean neck severance line – and noted the man's ears were, indeed, somewhat rodent-like. "She's right. His ears look slightly cupped and disproportionately small," Lauren said, and noted this on her clipboard.

Kenzi elbowed Bo and whispered, "Don't hate - appreciate."

Another photo showed a pale, nude torso lying prone on a crimson mattress. Lauren expanded the photo to show a particular detail – four wide-set puncture wounds on Orman's left side.

"Is that a giant snake bite?" Bo asked, squirming, "Because snakes are _not_ my favorite."

"The punctures are from thin, curved fangs, and scale objects indicate a four inch bite radius – which could mean a _very_ large snake. Sorry," Lauren said, with a kindly frown. "Orman was bitten along the external oblique, just below the fifth rib. The wound itself wasn't fatal; the bite introduced a potent, unknown toxin into his system. The skin around the wound site was clean, but the medical examiner's autopsy report showed a vascular system in advanced necrosis."

Bo squinted at her. "Umm…"

"Orman's veins, arteries, heart tissue – it was all rotten. Like a corpse in the third week of putrefaction."

At that point, Kenzi made a yakking noise and excused herself. "I'm getting a soda. Or I might just go vomit. Fifty-fifty." She clapped Bo on the back and gave Hale a knuckle bump. "V-Mars, out."

Kenzi crept out and didn't fully close the door. All eyes were on the screen at that moment, as Lauren broke out pictures of the second crime scene. Photos showed a handsome, sunny brick patio with a dead woman laid on a chaise lounge, and her severed head placed neatly atop a glass accent table.

"Suzanne Cramer, 60, real estate broker and manager," Lauren announced. "She handled numerous Light Fae commercial and residential holdings and controlled a profitable REIT comprised of our properties. She was killed two days ago, discovered by her elderly gardener – who, incidentally, had a stroke and died just after he called police."

"Jesus," Bo breathed, and nodded at the morbid patio tableau. "That's a hell of a last sight."

Lauren directed her to a close-up of four puncture wounds on the woman's left side. "Cramer was also bitten on the torso, though the bite radius was half the size of Orman's wound. As with the first victim, the autopsy was not completed – the bodies were quarantined pending identification of the corrosive toxin – but the report states there was evenomation and severe vascular damage."

"So was it poison? Battery acid? Bad curry?" Bo asked.

"Wish I knew. Even with repeated testing of _covertly procured_ tissue and blood samples," (here she and Hale exchanged a quick wink) "I still can't match the toxin to anything in the Fae database."

Hale expanded a close-up of Cramer's head. "Again with the mouse ears. Totally missed that."

"Join the club," Lauren said, and pulled up a similar photo from that morning's murder. The decapitated head of retirement fund manager Carl Kernan was also missing eyes and tongue, and the ears were slightly cupped and protruding.

"What would cause that kind of deformity?" Dyson wondered. "The victims aren't genetically related -"

"And there's no wound or visible trauma to the ears… not on the outside, anyway." Lauren squinted at the monitor and scanned thumbnails of all the victims, finally selecting three horrific upshots of the victim's severed heads, all focused on the open throat cavity. Her mouth went slack and she touched her lips, blushing and lost in thought. "Wow. I am really off my game."

"What?" Bo demanded. Dyson and Hale just glanced at each other and waited for the reveal.

"We've assumed that the eyes and tongue were removed externally, but right here," she zoomed focus to the edge of Kernan's open and visibly scratched throat "the trachea aperture is too wide. And here, see the curved abrasion, the arced lines? Like someone forced a helix-shaped implement up into his throat -"

"And cut his tongue out through the neck stump?" Bo finished. "That is beyond gnarly."

"No, it wasn't cut," Dyson said, sounding resolute. He scratched his beard and nodded at Lauren. "I follow; you're thinking the tongue was skewered and _sucked_ out."

"It would explain the cupped auricles," Lauren confirmed. "If my suspicion is correct, the suction also pulled out the larynx, inner and middle ear organs, eyes, hippocampus, and parts of the frontal lobe - the processing system for quantifiable knowledge."

"Damn." Hale removed his hat and frantically rubbed his scalp. "We got brain bandits."

Bo looked perturbed, like her mind was racing along a sidewalk and trying to flag down the information bus. "Brain bandits. You're saying someone or something actually cut off their heads, stuck a tube up their necks and and vacuumed out what they knew?"

"Everything they ever saw, heard, or said – essentially everything they were – stolen," Lauren said.

"So the killers are definitely Dark Fae," Bo assumed.

"_Dacoits pramata_ - knowledge thieves - are neither Dark nor Light," Lauren said. She squeezed her eyes shut and pinched her nose as if she were fighting a sudden headache. "They're amoral trans-Fae entities that exist primarily on another plane, one of pure information. They're compelled to remove valuable ideas from this world before they come to fruition – they collect and horde inspiration."

Bo nodded, but still looked dubious. "Were these three dead paper-pushers geniuses or something? Working on some kind of cure for the recession?"

"No. They were competent and honest, which is rare in the world of finance, but not amazing enough to attract dacoits pramata." Here again, Lauren blinked and rubbed at her tensed forehead. "Money has no meaning in their realm. I don't see why they would bother murdering and draining these particular humans."

"And what's with the snake bites?" Hale chipped in. "I know they travel in pairs, but none of the ghost stories my dad told me said anything about bandits using snakes."

Bo shot him a funny look. "Fae tell their kids ghost stories?"

Hale nodded, utterly unashamed. "Who's _not _scared of getting their brain sucked out?"

Lauren opened a screen keypad and searched up a scant file on the subject containing one page of text and three scans of ancient line drawings. One sketch depicted a cross-section of a humanoid head, with Latin designations for all the inner soft bits the thieves habitually removed. The other two sketches showed their weapons of choice: one long, hollow corkscrew, and one thick sword – somewhat like a machete – with a circular hole near the point and a brutally serrated hind edge.

"The fuck…" Bo muttered. She slid off her stool and stared at the last picture, stupefied by the coincidence. She tapped the sketch and the nasty weapon filled the screen. "I've seen this thing before."

"Think not. If you saw _that_ sword, you'd be minus ya head," Hale said. "My pop said bandits don't leave survivors."

"Tell your daddy I saw it in a prophecy," Bo snapped. "Mayer's niece, that little Harajuku twit Cassie, she showed me that sword_, in my hand_, covered in blood."

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

Kenzi leaned back in her chair and sipped from a frosty can of Dr. Pepper she hooked from the break room. The lights were low and curtains drawn on the patient bay, and she was pretty sure no one saw her sneak in. As she spun crap stories for a captive audience, one she didn't principally like, she was perhaps enjoying herself a tad too much. She propped her feet up on the edge of the Ash's hospital bed, and rode her crazy narrative into the home stretch.

"And then the Pope said, 'Damn, Kenzi! You slapped that chicken so hard, bitch started crying honey mustard! Verily, you are the baddest shorty in all of Vatican-land. Now come home with me and touch my black velvet painting of Elvis that cries.' And I said, '_Suffah, Pope!_'"

She tittered, feeling both silly and wicked. The Ash, of course, did not titter. Kenzi doubted he would have reacted at all, even without the whole coma thing. Though he was probably older than dirt, the Light Fae leader's face showed no evidence of regular strong emotion; there were no crow's feet by his eyes or crinkles around his mouth from smiling, and no scowl-lines across his brow.

In this, he differed from his human protégé, who regularly turned into a smiley pre-teen nerfball around Bo – and vice-versa, though it burned Kenzi's guts to admit that. She imagined they were probably flirting still, making cow eyes at each other over photos of severed heads while Bo's freshly exed ex looked on. It all smelled like trouble to Kenzi, and she found herself wishing again that Bo's preferred romantic avenues weren't so pocked with potholes.

"Hey. Any chance you might liberate Lauren so she can doctor at some regular hospital and boff my friend without causing boo-koo Fae trouble?" she asked, nudging the Ash's leg with her boot.

He remained perfectly still. The heart monitor beeped steadily, spiking little green waves across the tiny screen. Kenzi sneered at him, finished her soda and tucked the empty can into his hand. "That's what I thought you'd say. Jerk."

She grabbed up her bag and turned away, intending to rejoin her friends, hoping they were done with the gross-out portion of the exposition. The shocking noise of a soda can clattering to the floor brought her up short, sent a chill down her spine. Kenzi looked back toward the Ash and saw his fingers had relaxed open, letting the can drop.

"Okay. That is totally normal. Yeah. Muscles and reflexes and normal body stuff," she said. Even so, she peeked through the curtains and darted her eyes around frantically, just in case any of Lauren's vicious nurses were coming to clobber her for disrespecting _El Jefe_ with her nasty human company. The coast was clear, so she daintily deposited her soda can in the trash and slipped up to the Ash's bedside.

"You in there, dude?" Kenzi hovered over his face. "Sorry I called you a jerk. Just so we're clear, I don't really know the Pope. I lie, like, _all the time_."

The room went quiet; his heart monitor fell silent. Kenzi looked at the screen and saw the green lines bump and drop, just like before, only without sound. "You lost your beep," she observed, just before the monitor's green pixel lines went erratic, jumping in sharp spikes, then cresting in soft waves, then curling into dozens of concentric circles.

Kenzi craned her head toward the misbehaving monitor. Her eyes bulged with fascination and a healthy dose of fear. She inched closer to the screen, away from the bed, and felt a restraining tug on her bag's shoulder strap. Investigating the cause, she found the open hand of the Ash clinging to the bottom of her satchel. A faint silvery light pulsed between his palm and the bag. It looked almost like the arc on a live stun gun, all electrical and scary, and Kenzi wanted none of it.

"No! Mine!" she hissed, vainly trying to yank her bag away. The Ash did not let go; oddly, his hand remained open, but the bond seemed unbreakable. Glancing at his immobile face, Kenzi noticed rhythmic light beating behind his closed eyelids, leaking out along his lashes.

The heart monitor pixels formed lines and curves, numbers and letters, at first random and then making words and sequences she recognized. There were names and phone numbers for 'Bo' and 'Dal Riata' and 'Det. Hale,' then 'Dyson' and 'Federici's Pizza,' and someone called 'Fiiine Skip,' a cute skate punk she met recently at a bus stop.

With a start, Kenzi realized the monitor was displaying the contents of her mobile phone. She opened her bag and saw that purloined glass box full of (what she thought were) magnetic Buckyballs was glowing white, pulsing in time with the Ash's hand and eyes. Her phone clung to the side of the glass box like a barnacle. She dropped her precious handbag like it was on fire and stumbled backward, just as the monitor started making noise again… only it wasn't just beeping anymore.

A green digital smiley face formed on screen and started talking to her.

"_Keee_," said the chirping voice, calling to her from the tinny speaker. "_Ends. EEEE. Kee-ends-eee. Kenzi. Kenzi. Haallooo, Kenzi? Halloo. Hello, Kenzi?"_

"She's not here," Kenzi whispered, trembling and wondering if there was LSD in her Dr. Pepper. "She moved to Newfoundland."

The smiley face transformed to a dot sketch of her and Bo mugging for the camera – a pic stored on her phone – and listed her name in text over and over until it filled the screen. Even this ghost in the machine knew she was lying.

"_Kenzi_," the beepy voice said again. "_Haaalp? Halp. Help._"

"I can't help you I don't work here please don't eat me," she said, in a voice smaller than a mouse fart. "If you let me go, I'll bring you a nice, helpful doctor. I've been told she's delicious."

At that moment, the glowing bond between her stolen box of magnets and the Fae leader's hand faded and died; the light beneath his lids dimmed to darkness. Kenzi shouldered her freed bag and ripped open the curtains. To her profound dismay, she was actually desperate to find Lauren.

Behind her, the green lines on the monitor reformed into letters, repeating the same string on an endless loop: _elexabraash…elexabraash…elexabraash..._

Xx Xx

In the conference room, Lauren touched Bo's shoulder and the succubus flinched like she'd been burned. The doctor stepped back and rubbed a line of tension from her own forehead; it reformed immediately, deeper and stronger. "You're certain that sword is the one you saw in Cassie's vision?"

"Absolutely positive. And I was hacking the ever-loving shit out of someone." Bo inhaled deep, then reached out and smoothed her hand down Lauren's arm. "Sorry. Kinda jumpy. I thought that prophecy was about my mom, but I don't know. Maybe I misunderstood."

"Maybe," Lauren said. "I'll research the dacoits, try to find more in the older texts. Some of the Elders might know something about the sword, or a possible connection with snakes."

"Meantime, we need to stop the bleeding," Hale said. He produced three folders and handed one to Bo and one to Dyson. "These are our last money men. I say we stake 'em out tonight, roll video, and if anybody gets a hit, you light up the phone and shout for backup."

"You think the three of us could take down your boogeyman bandits?" Bo asked.

"I think we need hi-def proof that the Dark are not pulling this shit," Hale said. "I don't want to lose my pretty head, but I want a war even less."

Dyson nodded his agreement, and Bo did the same. They had likely suspects and a loose plan to avert catastrophe, or at least a half-assed scheme that would lead to their butchering by horrific wraiths. Either way, it was better than kicking back and waiting for a massive cross-clan bloodbath.

Suddenly, Dyson raised a hand, getting their attention and motioning for silence. His nostrils flared. As he sniffed the air, his eyes turned golden. He spun toward the partially open conference room door and pushed hard on the steel-ribbed glass. The door blasted open and violently collided with a body on the other side, knocking that uninvited observer on their ass.

With the door flung wide, all could see the spy, a fellow who had at least dressed for the part of James Bond. On the floor lay a golden-haired, diminutive hunk in a disheveled tuxedo. His tie and two black pearl buttons were missing. In his right hand, he clutched a bottle of red wine. The end of his left sleeve was empty, clamped shut at the bottom with a diamond and gold tie clip.

"Dammit," the man moaned, rolling onto his side. His skin was blotchy and his blue eyes shot through with red; he was, perhaps, slightly hung-over. "You fuckin' wolves have no manners."

"I smelled a rat," Dyson said. "I did what comes naturally."

Colors blurred as the smaller Fae flew to his feet and bared double rows of saw-like teeth under Dyson's nose. Whether or not he was aching from drink, the fellow's temper had a sobering effect. "With one word from me, the High Council will have you shooting rats at the city dump, _detective_."

Dyson flashed an ugly smile. "You need to let that jealousy go, junior. It's not my fault you couldn't pass the police psych exam."

The smaller Fae snapped his teeth, barely touching the end of Dyson's nose, but the detective stood stock still, not intimidated in the least. Wolfish eyes remained bright yellow; Dyson's fangs weren't out, but that could have changed in an instant. Bo and Hale were tensed and ready for a fight. Against her better judgment, Lauren moved first and intervened. She wedged an arm between the combatants, levering them apart before their pissing contest turned violent.

"When my father learns of your _impudence _-" the little man growled.

"Take it easy, Gael," Lauren intoned, calm and firm. "Elder Gorrick doesn't need to hear about this – just like he doesn't need to hear you left a fellow Light security agent stranded on assignment, and that she _nearly died_ as a consequence. Discretion is a two-way street."

Gael snarled at Dyson once more, giggled, and backed away. As he turned his gaze on Lauren, he retracted his pointed outer teeth and twisted his face into a greasy approximation of civility. "Sugar on the pill. That's you all over, cutter."

"Don't," Lauren said softly. Her eyes flicked to his empty sleeve, then engaged him with a flat stare. "Are you here for a check-up? You're only two years overdue for gene sampling."

Gael's ruddy complexion paled a little, but he held her gaze. "Feeble guess. Participation in your little science project is voluntary for High Elder families. Therefore, you will not touch me _ever again_." His vacant left sleeve flapped nervously, as though his partial arm was twitching, and he faked a smile. "Now don't sulk; you know it would never work between us."

Lauren gave him a tart smile. "Just as well. You're not my type."

"Indeed, and that sparkling riposte actually reminds me why I'm here," he said. "I've brought a gift for our mutual friend Justine, to apologize."

"As usual, you're too late. She just left," Lauren said.

"Hmm. Shame. Wanted to say thanks for not dying. The girl's tops at that, yeah? Not dying? Real battler."

Lauren pressed her lips together, binding down a troublesome flood of impolitic words. Gael seemed to realize his japes were needling the doctor, and this encouraged him to take it even further.

"I've read that your Roman nobles rewarded gladiators with leisure time, strong wine, and sweet whores." He offered Lauren the dark bottle of 2007 Chateau Margaux Bordeaux and winked at her. "Our girl is overdue for a good time, cutter. Be sweet to her?"

Before Lauren could even process a response to his bold insult, Gael's wine bottle peace offering was snatched from his hand and jammed under his chin – by a starkly angry succubus.

Bo grabbed his collar, winched him closer and inhaled strong, tugging wisps of chi from between Gael's curled lips, dragging it across his sharp teeth and lapping up shreds of his life force. It wasn't a full attack, only enough to convey the danger he had provoked. When she released him, his watery eyes were wide and hazy. Silent and wary, he stumbled back a few steps.

"You should leave," Bo said, with a rumble of deep hunger in her voice, "before I start to wonder what your last breath would taste like."

Gael swallowed hard, straightened his clothes, and managed to smile politely at Lauren. "You have such interesting friends, Doctor Lewis. Pity they're all going to get themselves killed chasing invincible phantoms."

Lauren gave him a stern look and a warning. "You can't tell anyone what you overheard. If word gets out about the dacoits pramata… there would be a panic… we couldn't…" Lauren lost her words, grabbed her forehead as a sharp pain dug into her skull. A trickle of blood leaked from her nose and dripped onto her white lab coat.

"Lauren?" Bo called to her as she wobbled and nearly went down. She wrapped an arm around the doctor's shoulders and helped her sit, dabbed at her bloody nose with a folded shirt sleeve.

"Arrogant human," Gael sneered. "You really shouldn't use their proper name – it's like giving the fuckers a cosmic Facebook poke."

Bo glared at him and Gael shrugged and walked away, just as Kenzi wheeled around the corner in a full-bore panic.

"The Ash is awake! He's talking like Johnny Five!" she cried. "And he tried to steal my purse!"

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

* Vacation and work devoured my spare time this past month, but things should be back on course now.

** As a 'thank you' to patient readers, I have a few Dreamwidth invite codes that I can give out. Drop me a note if you want one.

XXxxXX

Chapter 8

Lauren Lewis wasn't the type of person who enjoyed loudly dressing down others, but she _really_ wanted to yell at Kenzi for sparking a false alarm – and it was obviously a false alarm. Far from being awake, The Ash was still in his bed, still definitively comatose, and definitely not talking like a lovable robot from an 80s comedy film.

She checked and re-checked his monitor logs, which charted no significant change in heart rate, blood pressure, or neural activity. There was one aberration on his Delta wave pattern - a stuttering series of thirty-two dips and peaks occurring over a ten second period - but nothing to indicate sustained and alert brain function. Her brief moment of elated hope had flamed out, and no scientific gauge could measure how desperately Lauren wanted to yell.

She sent a seething Boston Sharon and two deflated nurses out of the patient bay and wheeled on Kenzi. She clenched her jaw and growled a reprimand. "Is everything a joke to you?"

Kenzi's eyes bulged in protest. "No! There was a little face on the heart monitor and it beeped at me and said my name and asked for _haaalp!_ Just like that, I swear to God!" She saw that Bo and Hale and Dyson all wore serious doubt-face, so she displayed her dead phone like damning evidence. "It's empty now, see? He zapped all my private, personal content and uploaded it to that little screen! His hand was _glowing _and stuck to the bottom of my bag! I shit you not, it was _sparking _and like, like… magnetic?"

She pulled out the stolen glass box of magnetic balls, which had evidently lost their charge. They rattled around loose inside the container like so many dead ball bearings. Kenzi shook them gently and grimaced at Lauren. "I think maybe the Ash broke your Buckyballs," she said, totally straight-faced, "with his glowing Wikileaks hand."

Bo groaned and narrowed her eyes. "Let me guess. Those just fell off a lab table and landed in your purse."

Kenzi shrugged, looking mildly abashed. "Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly."

"Oh, come on! We've talked about this shit," Bo chastised. "Boundaries, remember? No stealing from friends?"

"I _don't_ steal from my friends," Kenzi replied, sneering a bit toward Lauren as if to say _she doesn't count_.

For that, Bo shot her a glass-cutting look and proceeded to read Kenzi an unexpurgated version of the riot act.

As the two argued, Lauren closed her eyes and tried to shut it all out. Her head still hurt like someone was driving a hot spike through her forehead, so she pictured herself running around the lab screaming _Dacoits pramata! Dacoits pramata! _until her skull literally broke open and torment spurted out like brackish water. She felt more blood trickle from her nostril and wiped it away, impatient and resentful of her body's weakness. Instead of shouting, she gave a dry, sad chuckle that siphoned off none of her bile.

"Listen," she said to Kenzi. "I need for you to leave now. Please."

Her chilly, calm voice brought Kenzi up short. She stopped grousing at Bo and blinked at the doctor. "What? You think I'm lying?"

"That doesn't matter," Lauren said. "You mock me, steal from me – it's pretty obvious you don't give a damn what I think, and that's fine. But this is not the time to play games with my head."

"I'm not! He was talking!" Kenzi insisted. "It's not my fault you don't know how or why!"

"You're right about that," Lauren told her. _It's not her fault that I'm falling so short, that I'm only human, _she told herself.

"Let me tell you what I do know: the Light are without a leader," she went on. "Everyone in this building is bracing for disaster. If war breaks out over these murders, hundreds of Fae will die – maybe thousands, if it spreads beyond the counties - and the Ash can't stop it from a hospital bed. I'm his doctor and I can't heal him and you _cannot imagine_ the frustration and helplessness I'm feeling right now. You'll understand if I'm even more strident and humorless than usual."

Kenzi sighed and tried to interject. "Look, I didn't -"

"Forget it," Lauren said. She was nearly done in, and way past done with this conversation. "For the record, Kenzi, I do pray that you're telling the truth. Maybe I'm just too tired and angry to see it at the moment. Now _please_ get the hell out of my lab."

As Hale and Dyson looked on - stunned and amused, respectively - Lauren whipped open the bay curtains and pointed everyone toward the exit. As Bo the embarrassed straggler came near, Lauren brushed her shoulder and whispered for her to be careful. Lauren had an impulse to kiss her goodbye, but her head was full of thunder and her goddamned nose wouldn't stop bleeding.

_You are three pounds of pliant tissue and 100 billion neurons, but you are only entitled to 20% of my blood,_ Lauren told her brain. _Don't get greedy. And please don't quit on me now._

After the bay cleared, she yelled (finally, finally) for any nearby Sharon to bring her the hemostatic calcium alginate and a box of rayon-tipped swabs.

"How much C-A do you want?" Guatemala Sharon called back.

Lauren leaned over the sink. Blood seeped from both nostrils and plopped steadily into the stainless steel well. In the mirror, her reflection was ghostly pale and she felt faint. She needed more red blood cells and fast.

"Bring all of it," she replied. "And snag a unit of my reserve blood and a transfusion kit."

The curtain slid open to admit a petite, friendly looking woman with wide yellow eyes and vertical pupils. Guatemala Sharon frowned over Lauren's appearance and made a yucky face. "I'll get two units," said the Fae nurse. "You look like hell, Dr. Lewis."

Lauren smiled and pinched a tissue over her nose. "Thanks. You're fired," she grumbled.

The Balam giggled and offered the human her strong arm for support as they left for the treatment area.

As they walked away, Gael crept down the hall and slipped through the curtains to stand by the Ash's bed. He activated a Bluetooth headset and spoke quietly to someone on the other end of the line.

"False alarm - he's not awake. Yes, the Elders consent, but we need to push the tempo... tonight. Yes, tonight… no, Lewis won't go willingly. Yes, I know… but it's not my fault! If you need a scapegoat, blame Justine! Her ample charms proved inadequate."

He glanced around, bit his lip, and lowered his voice. "Father says _we_ must deliver her to them or the deal is void... should be easy enough... no, all her valiant protectors are otherwise engaged. She'll be here alone all night, and the bitch won't stray from her master's leg... Just hold fast. By morning, the bandits will have what they need, and we'll have our brave new world. Hold fast... Cheery bye, love."

Gael ended his call, leaned over the Ash's pacific face and grinned. In his empty left sleeve, the truncated arm wiggled and tensed in a sinuous, irregular fashion.

"Would that I could burn you to cinders myself, but I'm no Elder," Gael whispered. "You got the easy part in all this, old top – you get to sleep through the revolution."

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Except for a brief shouting match in the car, Bo didn't speak more than a dozen words to her best friend after they left the Fae labs. She drove home with the windows open and the radio blaring, and then flopped on her bed and dove into Lauren's tidy leather-bound case files for the rest of the afternoon.

Not to be outdone, Kenzi fired up her game console, popped in "Development Deal with The Devil" and killed zombified Hollywood bureaucrats until her thumbs cramped. She stubbornly endured Bo's disapproving silence because she didn't feel like she'd committed any capital offenses and she _would not_ apologize.

Not to say she didn't consider it; better to be happy than right, after all. Kenzi knew that since meeting Bo, she had gone a little soft. She got used to having someone to count on, someone who would always be on her side. The thought of ruining that was really scary, and she didn't want to go back to how things were before. Still, her pride was a high fence topped with razor wire, so... no sorries.

Night fell. They armed up and drove off to work without having spoken more than a few random criticisms of outfits and weapons. _You're wearing __**that**__ jacket? – Problem, Tim Gunn? – Yeah, the leather squeaks like a million mice. – Oh, and your sawed-off shotgun is __**sooo**__ stealthy._ And so on and so forth - though Kenzi did change her noisy jacket.

Bo parked the car on an industrial district drive bracketed by cracked sidewalks. Remodeled warehouses and office buildings now housed vacant loft apartments, shuttered galleries, and yoga studios twisted into bankruptcy by the recession. All this dead space was tinted a melancholy pink by flickering street lamps. Shortly after Bo cut the engine, the motion-sensing light above their car timed out and darkness joined their uneasy silence.

In the quiet, they heard the faint bass thrum of a distant nightclub. Kenzi moved to turn on the car radio and Bo slapped her hand away.

"Sheezus," she muttered, shaking her stung paw. "Just wanted a little music."

"We're on a stakeout," Bo said softly, gesturing across the street toward their surveillance target's apartment building. "Being quiet is pretty much rule number one."

"Suddenly she's fond of rules," Kenzi observed. "Maybe you and Dr. Freeze have a future after all. Move into some industrial cleanroom, raise quiet little judgmental babies…"

Bo just shook her head and turned away. She stared at her shirt sleeve cuff, the plum fabric stained even darker by the dried smear of blood she'd hastily wiped from Lauren's nose.

_Should've changed clothes,_ Bo thought, and winced at the memory of Lauren's confusion and embarrassment over the nosebleed episodes.

The woman obviously hated showing weakness. Considering her position among the Fae, exuding self-control was probably a survival skill. Still, when Lauren kicked everyone out, Bo hadn't wanted to leave her, and not just because the doctor seemed unwell. After their 'very slippery' morning, the succubus was fairly plagued with questions no one else could answer.

She wondered why Lauren got hemorrhagic headaches just from saying _dacoits pramata _three times, while Bo had chanted the brain bandits' formal name all afternoon without registering a blip of pain. Whatever the reason for Lauren's reaction, it felt like trouble on the rise. Hale said Fae had been frightened of these creatures for generations, and Bo did not take these combined factors lightly. If the dacoits showed up tonight, she planned to call for help ASAP.

Aside from pondering the bandits, Bo also wanted to know more about that punk jerkwad Gael. His beef with Dyson was plain enough, but why did he and Lauren despise each other so? "Cutter" was clearly not an affectionate nickname. He also implied strongly that she and Justine of the divine tits had more than a doctor/patient relationship.

Lauren had said she wasn't seeing the woman at present; she never said they hadn't traded favors in days gone by. Bo had learned at great pains that Lauren didn't lie when asked a direct question, but she could sweeten the truth and make it easier to swallow.

_Sugar on the pill_, Bo recalled Gael saying. _Prick or no, he was right about that._

And what was Gael's angle, anyway? In his presumptuous and insultingly dickish way, he seemed really hopeful that Lauren would toddle off to Justine's sex villa tonight to get busy and guzzle down his stupid expensive sex wine. Did Gael like Justine that much, or did he want Lauren to get in trouble for leaving her post?

And fuck-it-all, why did this Justine-person have to resemble a well-fed Angelina Jolie? And use smart people words like 'hubris' and 'primeval'? And have that _stupid _accent that made her every utterance to Lauren sound like post-coital whispering?

Swamped by this stream of thoughts, Bo lost control of her imagination and pictured Lauren and Justine together – entwined naked in a dark, starlit pool, kissing deeply – and her fists clenched so hard that her nails bit into her palms. Far from being titillated, she found the very idea repellant and nauseating. A shiver of green lightning shot down her spine.

_Oh, shit. _She bit her lip and shut her eyes, wanted to laugh at herself._ Great… I'm jealous._

The 'don't fence me in, don't tell me what to do' succubus was wholly unfamiliar with the flip-side of possessiveness, and found her first taste extremely unappealing. This feeling had the potential to send Bo into a twitching, itching, smothering wool turtleneck fit of discomfort, so she stripped it off and threw it into a brain corner. She'd worry about it later. She shifted in her seat, scouted the street again, and rubbed a bit of tension from her temples.

"Stop thinking so hard," Kenzi moaned. She stared through the side window toward a blackout alley mouth, but was obviously keyed-in to Bo's distress. "You're gonna bust a vessel."

Bo looked to her friend. Despite their unresolved tiff over inappropriate petty theft and cruel practical jokes, she wanted to spill her guts and let the young woman's oddball wisdom pull some haruspex insight from the mess. Not talking out her troubles with someone as keen as Kenzi felt unnatural and wasteful, like having a Ferrari you only drive under the speed limit.

"I don't want to open this up again," Bo began softly. "You don't like Lauren, I get that, but what you did to her is not okay. Your timing was complete crap."

Kenzi huffed and let her head _thunk_ against the side glass. "For the last time, I was not joking. I didn't make up that janky story to screw with your precious perfect girlfriend."

Bo rolled her eyes and looked away, tried to ignore the itchy feeling _that word_ now gave her. She eagerly scanned the empty street, willing a monster to appear and start raising hell. Any monster would do. Even a menacing squeegee guy would suffice. "Lauren's not my girlfriend."

"She wants to be. Bitch is sprung for you, and it's obviously mutual," Kenzi said, sounding weary and resigned.

"_Obviously,"_ Bo groaned. "Am I that transparent, oh wise one?"

"No use denying it. A damsel in distress triggers the knight gallant reflex in you hero types. For the rest of us, it's the gag reflex, but whatever." Kenzi looked over and caught Bo's eye. "Hey. You may be a dumbass, but you're my girl. And even though I know you could find someone better, less boregasmic, with a higher core temperature... if Lauren is what you want, then godspeed and good luck."

Bo felt a glimmer of hope, though she suspected this little olive branch might be a trap. "I don't understand what's happening right now."

"Par for the course," Kenzi teased, prompting an ugly smile from Bo. "For real, this is me coming to grips with the inevitable troika of me and you and your _blatnoi _boo."

"My _what_?" Bo asked, amused and confused in halfsies.

Kenzi could have explained the word _blatnoi_ (used by her 'thief in the law' Uncle Lev to describe crooks who took care of crooks, shady people who had credit in the straight world) but it probably would have irritated Bo again. "Boo?" she said instead. "It's a term of endearment popularized by hip-hop culture. Analogous to baby or darling -"

"Yeah, I'm familiar," Bo said, nodding and sneering. "Look, if you're going to trash talk, at least do it in English so I have a fighting chance."

Kenzi snickered. "Aww, boo - the language ain't the problem. Your tongue might be prom queen, but mine is debate team captain," she said, and laughed harder when Bo slapped her arm. "No violence! No violence! I'm white-flagging, here!"

Bo sobered and looked levelly at her friend. "Seriously? You'll be all chill and nice if I start seeing Lauren?"

Kenzi shrugged and gave a flat smile. "The way I see it, we're all just stumbling through life hoping to find people who want to see us naked _after_ they know we're assholes," she said. "As long as this isn't some knee-jerk backlash against Dyson -"

"It is _not_."

"And you're choosing Lauren based on what you need deep inside, not just because you want her deep inside you -"

"Oh, God..." Bo covered her eyes. Her cheeks went pink.

"Then I'm on board the B&L Express. Buy me a first-class ticket," Kenzi said. "When you come up for air, you can find me in the bar car."

Bo looked up and smiled, feeling as close to happy as she could get, given the circumstances. "Thanks, Kenz. And FYI? I hate fighting with you."

Kenzi frownsmiled and laid a hand over her heart. "Me too, BoBo."

"I would offer to kiss and make up, but I am really, _really_ hungry right now."

Kenzi waved off the suggestion. "Pass. I know you have trouble controlling yourself around my crazy sexy woman-stuff," she said, making a Playmate face and ghosting a hand over her modest curves.

"It's a daily struggle," Bo deadpanned.

"Maybe I'll give you a mercy peck later," Kenzi said. "You got your koo-chung necklace, just in case?"

"Koushang," Bo corrected. She patted her breast pocket where the chi-binding amulet rested in a silk handkerchief. "It's right here. But it isn't mine. Lauren just loaned it to me. I'll give it to her next time I see her."

Kenzi smirked and lifted a brow. "Bet you will."

"Crass," Bo said, though she was grinning at the prospect.

That grin died quickly as Bo caught movement in her peripheral vision. She cut her eyes left and saw a fast moving figure crossing the street toward their target's apartment building. Clad in a wide-brimmed hat, tall leather engineer boots, and an old-fashioned brown raincoat with the collar flipped up, the figure stood over six feet and moved with an almost slithery grace.

"We got company," Kenzi said. She switched on the Flip HD camera mounted to the dashboard and started recording video. "You want me to call Hale?"

Bo paused, not wanting to jump the gun. She watched the figure slow and stop in the middle of the street, perhaps forty yards away. The hat brim canted as its head turned side to side, but even as it faced them, she could not see features in the dim rosy light. "Does that look like a sword-swinging brain bandit to you?"

Kenzi's wide eyes took in every detail of his outfit. "Maybe he got lost on his way to a steampunk party 'round the way," she said, referring to the distant bass-heavy music they heard earlier.

That sounded implausible to Bo. "Do steampunks like dubstep?" she queried.

Kenzi pulled a confused face. "Who knows? I thought they were just goths who discovered the color brown."

"Hell with this. I'm gonna check it out," Bo said. She dropped her phone in Kenzi's lap and launched herself from the car before her friend could protest.

Bo wrapped her fingers around the stock of her shotgun and twisted the sling around for quick response, should a shooting solution become necessary. A .45 Ruger clung to the small of her back, and her waistband was studded with knife hilts. Bo felt ready to rumble, but hoped it would not come to that. Maybe this really was just some dude who got lost on his way to a shindig and wandered right up to their stakeout site.

_No such thing as coincidence,_ her instincts told her. _Stay alert._

She walked steadily toward the brown-clad figure and became aware (within the first few steps) that he was waiting for her. Calm and still as a statue, he loitered with both hands tucked in raincoat pockets.

"Hey," she called out. "You lost? Need some help?"

Closer now, within about thirty feet, the figure turned his face toward her and into the full blush of pink streetlights. Bo blinked, unsure that she was seeing correctly. The humanoid face beneath that wide-brimmed hat appeared to be covered in scales – variegated, shifting patterns of greens and grays. The almond-shaped eyes glowed like backlit amber. And the mouth…

"_Fuck me_," Bo breathed, as that mouth opened and flashed twin sets of sharp, curved fangs as thick as her thumbs.

The creature seemed to find her response amusing. It chuckled – a high, wheezing sound that might come from a crushed harmonica – and darted sideways into the darkened alley by their target's building.

Bo spun her shotgun leash around and thumbed off the safety. She waggled her thumb and pinkie at Kenzi as a signal to call for help while running full-steam after the creature, straight into the pitch black alley mouth.

She heard the first swing coming and ducked. Something thin and fast whizzed over her head. The creature was beside her, behind her, to the right - a blur and a scuttling sound. Bo kicked backward at the motion and connected solidly. There was a grunt of pain.

She palmed the shotgun butt, twisted toward the scuffling boot sounds and pulled the trigger. A deafening blast of noise echoed within the brick and concrete canyon. Bo heard the splintering of wood and mortar and knew she had missed.

A second swing came at her from the ten o'clock position, a duet of split air and steel, and she angled her shotgun up to block the blade. Metal fussed against metal and she turned away, rolling her back along the rough brick wall. The creature's blade swirled showy patterns in the blackness, signaling his position. Bo tilted the shotgun down and fired her second shell.

Wet thudding met her ears; the splattering of soft skin accompanied the shrill bounce of metal scraps clattering onto macadam. Dead solid contact. Bo breathed for the first time since entering the alley. Her ears ached, and her eyes were starved for light.

Bo reached into her jacket pocket and produced a small flashlight, shone the beam onto the spot where her foe should have fallen. Nothing was there but a spray of dark blood on the alley floor. And a sword – but not the sword she expected.

This was merely a short Japanese katana with a plain leather handle and a black matte-finish blade, now busted into shards by twelve-gauge shot. A well-made but prosaic weapon that did not mesh with their theory about dacoits pramata, it could have belonged to any Dark Fae agent.

"Fantastic," Bo sighed, swapping her shotgun for the .45 Ruger pistol. "Lousy, shit-stirring Dark jerkoffs."

As she turned to exit the alley, her flashlight brushed over a pair of amber eyes low against the wall. Bo aimed her gun at the snakelike creature and shouted a warning. "Whoa! Don't move! Lay on the ground, face down!"

The creature blinked and held still. It breathed quickly through an open mouth, forked tongue lolling over scaled lips, limp and twitchy. Bo saw a wide, grisly bloodstain across its raincoated chest. Unable to keep crouched against the wall, it wobbled and dropped onto hands and knees. It looked up at her and keened, sounding pitifully frightened.

Bo waved an open palm at the creature. "Just lie down, take it easy," she said. "We've got a good doctor. She can help you."

The Fae laughed at this, a wet gurgle of black humor. "I'll die first," it said, and launched itself at Bo's legs.

She yanked on the trigger and fired two shots before her back hit the wall and her head hit the wall and the gun dropped and the whole world went dizzy gray. Through the haze, Bo felt a deep, knifing pain along her inner thigh as the creature bit into her flesh. She may have screamed. She definitely grabbed his head and gouged her thumbs into his eyes.

He slapped her hands aside, scrambled up her body and lunged for her throat. Bo raised her left arm and the teeth pierced her triceps. She cried out and snatched a knife from her belt, stabbed her attacker in the neck with five inches of double-edged steel, and screamed as she twisted the blade in a full circle.

The snake creature howled and sprang off her, yanked the knife from his throat. Cool blood, jet-dark by the glow of her fallen flashlight, spurted onto her legs. He calmed himself, smiled down at her, and spun the knife blade-down for a killing blow.

Bo was too far gone to register the sound of an approaching V-8 engine or the harsh brightness of headlights. But she heard the heavy thud and crash as her beat-up yellow hot rod tore into the alley and crushed the Fae attacker between a brick wall and a stout Detroit steel bumper. She heard the door creak open and heard Kenzi shouting her name.

"God oh God oh God," Kenzi chanted, scooping her arms around Bo's upper body and propping her against the wall. "I called Hale and Dyson, but neither of them answered! What do I do? The _fuck_ is that _thing _I just smashed? Bo? Bo? Please say something! Bo? What do we do now?"

By that point, Bo could barely find her voice through the pain. There was a burning under her skin, like her blood was catching fire, turning caustic inside her veins. She had a passing awareness that she was probably going to die tonight.

She was so, so not ready. There were too many things she hadn't done yet. She hadn't seen Rio during Carnivale, or watched the sun rise in the Caribbean. She'd never truly been in love with someone who loved her in return, openly and honestly… which was just a damned shame. Bo had always secretly believed she'd be _awesome_ at that, if the chance ever came.

Bo's listless eyes drifted across the prow of their wrecked car, and she saw the snake-faced Fae had vanished. Fear spiked up her adrenaline. She burned off the little strength she had left and struggled onto her feet.

Her bitten right thigh throbbed like bombshells bursting and she felt a gush of blood run down her leg. It didn't matter. She'd hop on one foot if need be. Whatever else happened, she had to get Kenzi to safety. Bo picked up her Ruger and draped her wounded arm around Kenzi's shoulders for support.

"We gotta move. _Now_."

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

*Major gratitude to everyone who's given feedback. Makes a difference knowing this isn't flying off into the void. Thank you!

Chapter 10

In a back booth of a kitschy Irish pub, Dyson nursed a bottle of water and watched his human surveillance target - an anthropomorphized cocktail shaker named Dave Hubbard - slug back his fourth Captain and Coke. Dave made a bundle on a stock trade earlier in the day, and he kept telling everyone in earshot that he planned to get "violently drunk and gently sexed, or vice-versa." As he pinned down a barstool and chatted with friends, Dave seemed blissfully unaware that a mystical clan of thieving assassins might behead him tonight.

For his part, Dyson had stopped drinking early in the afternoon and he wasn't happy about it. Sobriety made his memories glow like stoked iron, and he touched them compulsively hoping to grow inured to the pain. He burned himself more than once by recalling the peace and hope that came from waking beside Bo, and then compounded the injury with fresher memories of Bo smiling at Lauren, defending her against Gael's insults, touching her easily and often.

Though things were developing faster than he'd expected on that front, Dyson was not surprised. Even before breaking things off with Bo, he suspected that her natural reaction would be to reconcile with Lauren. For all the doctor's flaws and weaknesses, she and Bo shared an organic intimacy that appeared more resilient than most human/Fae affections.

Dyson wondered if that connection would have doomed his romance with Bo, even without the Norn's curse. He hadn't been willing to share Bo with anyone - not strangers, not hirelings, and least of all someone she might love. With temptation so nearby, would Bo have stayed faithful? Was monogamy even a healthy option for her – or for him?

Her appetite already exceeded his strength, and she was still so very young. When she came into her full powers, the succubus would be more than your average Fae virago; Bo could become the Alpha Bitch of the whole damned clan. Dyson pictured himself curled at her feet like a whipped Beta, and his inner wolf responded with a nasty, rumbling snarl.

_Maybe it's just as well_, Dyson thought. He reflected that at some point, Bo likely would have hammered his heart by fucking Lauren behind his back. Or she might have let her hunger pulp his bones and suck the last electron from his marrow, turned him into a mindless Thrall. Either way, her love would have crippled him, broken him in ways that did not heal.

_Yeah. Dodged a silver bullet, _he thought. For a moment, he almost believed it_._ The whole thing was just ridiculous; love, envy, lust and fear and loathing and all the other silly trash that clung to every second of life that was not spent in battle. At times like this, Dyson desperately missed war and wondered if a cross-clan throwdown would really be so awful. He shook it off and took a thirsty pull from his water bottle.

Dyson's senses pulled him back to the moment. He smelled something familiar, heard the faint echo of known voices coming from the pub's backroom. He scooted deeper into the booth and watched from the shadows as double doors squeaked open. Two black-suited hulks that Dyson recognized as Light Fae security agents lumbered into view.

Their attention sifted through the modest weeknight crowd and settled quietly on Dave Hubbard. One agent tapped a button on his Bluetooth headset and said, "Right here, safe and sound." They stood casually near the end of the bar and ordered beers they did not drink.

Shortly, the backroom doors opened again, and in walked Serena. The head of Light Fae security did not join her men; she looked a slow circle around the room until she found Dyson. Serena smiled as if she expected to see him, gave him a friendly salute, and joined him in the booth. The detective masked his uneasiness with a light remark.

"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world," Dyson said, and chuckled at Serena's baffled expression. She was notoriously dismissive of human culture – of humans in general, really – and he knew she wouldn't get the _Casablanca _reference.

"Pardon me?" she said.

Dyson shrugged and finished his water. "Wouldn't hurt you to see a movie once in a while."

"Not my thing. Some of us work for a living." Serena glanced over her shoulder at Dave Hubbard, still laughing and drinking like a deranged frat boy. "Seems even dumber than that Popobawa we killed in Zanzibar. Aren't you curious why _brain bandits_ would want such a fool?"

Dyson gritted his teeth; of course Gael had run straight to Serena and told her of their suspicions. "Little man has a big mouth."

"Gael is a spoiled, sadistic piece of shit, but that's beside the point. Do you have any clue what the end game is here? Why _these humans_ are being drained, and why it's happening _right now_, when the Ash is away dreaming of sunshine and bumblebees?"

Dyson's eyes narrowed to slits. Beneath the table, his palms began to sweat. Serena clasped her hands and leaned closer, whispering. "If you did know, my friend, I think you wouldn't be here tonight. I think you'd trot home to bed and sleep like a cub."

Every hair on Dyson's body stood on end. "Don't tease," he said, trying to sound intrigued more than alarmed.

His phone buzzed on the tabletop, flashing an incoming call from Bo. He went to answer it, and Serena snatched the phone away. She looked at the caller I.D. and pressed 'Ignore' to reroute Bo's call into limbo. Dyson hoped that Bo was just checking in, because if she needed help from him, the succubus was out of luck.

Serena smiled like her secrets were burning holes in her pockets – which was funny, since her entire wardrobe was flame-retardant. "Okay," she said. "You asked for it."

XXxxXX

Kenzi's legs were giving out by the time they reached the entrance to "Gatekeeper," the nearby club which provided the only source of crowd protection in this desolate area of town. Would have been easier to drive, naturally, but the beater had suffered a badly bent fender well when Kenzi used their car as a battering ram against the snake-faced Fae that attacked Bo.

"Hey, look! We caught some luck - no cover charge," Kenzi said as they approached the unguarded club entrance. She wasn't in the mood to slick past some bloated rope jockey masquerading as a bouncer, and she was pretty sure all Bo's money was soaked in blood.

Bo was past caring, past talking, almost unable to stay upright. She leaned heavily against Kenzi and murmured something that sounded like 'bathroom.' So that's where they went, slowly weaving through a few dozen people dancing to house music under purple light, down a dim hallway festooned with graffiti of marker and nail polish and logo stickers for bands that broke up too soon or too late, and into the flickering fluorescent haven of an empty bathroom.

Kenzi barricaded the door with a heavy steel trash can. Bo collapsed onto the floor like a rag doll. Her injuries, starkly visible in the bright light, made Kenzi bite her jaw to keep from crying. She rolled out a massive puff of paper towels and fell to her knees, blotting blood from Bo's shredded upper thigh.

She pressed a second makeshift bandage against Bo's bitten arm, and the succubus grunted a curse and clenched her teeth. The blood flow was slow there, along her triceps, but the leg bite was frightening, all torn skin and dark puncture wounds and blood that gushed out in time with Bo's erratic pulse.

Kenzi dropped the sodden towels and clasped Bo's face between her sticky red palms. "Bo! Bo! The blood won't stop and I don't know what to do! Dyson and Hale still aren't answering their _goddamn phones_!" Kenzi shouted. Fae secrecy be damned, she had to do something. "I'm calling 911!"

Bo roused enough to grip her wrist before Kenzi could dial. "No," she gasped. "_Lauren."_

XXxxXX

There's a reason endurance athletes risk shame and sanctions to engage in blood doping: it works. After Lauren – with help from Sharon – finished her autologous transfusion and choked off the nosebleeds with C-A swabs, her hematocrit levels rose to 44% and she felt like running a marathon.

Sharon bullied her into taking a break for a few hours. _Do some yoga, take a shower, have a nap. I can stare at the Ash just as well as you can,_ she had said. And though her nurse intended for these activities to take her mind off current events, Lauren couldn't shut her brain off, even while straining to maintain peacock pose.

She was stuck on the idea that Kenzi wasn't just having a laugh at her expense, that those thirty-two dips and peaks in the Ash's delta pattern comprised some sort of message. Sweat dripped from her brow onto the yoga mat as she rushed through another set of possibilities.

_Icosidodecahedron. Archimedean Solid with thirty-two faces - twenty triangular and twelve pentagonal, but geometry is not words. Germanium has an atomic number of thirty-two, but chemistry is not words. Adult humans have thirty-two teeth. Dentistry is __**not fucking words**__. Think, idiot!_

She transitioned to plank position and kept going, kept thinking it through, trying to brute force an answer from the incomplete equation.

_Twenty-two paths connect the ten Sephiroth energy spheres in the Tree of Life... God – Tree of Life? It sounds good, but it's not communication. The Persian alphabet has thirty-two letters. Communication in thirty-two… shit._

Lauren dropped to the mat like a sack of stones. She pulled on a track jacket and some sneakers and dashed from her apartment grinning like a lunatic. She took the private spiral staircase, jumping down two and three steps at a clip and bounded into the lab, startling Guatemala Sharon – the only staffer left in the lab at this late hour.

"It's a hash function!" Lauren whooped. "The Ash sent out a goddamned hash function!"

"Okaaay," Sharon said carefully, setting aside her issue of In Style magazine. "I don't know what that _means_."

Lauren was already riffling through the Ash's charts and translating the thirty-two blips into the server. "It's a message-digest algorithm that compresses large amounts of data into a string of thirty-two hexicecimal characters," she explained.

Sharon hovered over her shoulder, almost bouncing on her heels from excitement. "If that was the blip, would it mean the Ash is conscious on some level?"

Lauren turned to her and smiled. "Yeah. It would."

"So… what did he say to the little Russian girl?"

The doctor winced and delivered the bad news. "We might not know for a while. Interpreting high-level hashes can be a best-guess affair, but older variations can be broken by grinding the algorithm through hundreds of thousands of keys per second until it gives up its secrets."

"This is why you bought the big computer," Sharon said, nodding at the blade server mainframe and the giant touchscreen. "Other Sharon said it was for porn."

"Other Sharon can eat me," Lauren grumbled, prompting a junior-high snort from her nurse. She keyed in a series of instructions and tasked two software programs and some custom flex-loop rainbow tables for the job, then left the grunt work to the insane co-processing power of multiple integrated Xeon CPUs and Tesla GPUs. "Now we let the computer hash it out. Pun intended."

Sharon mimed gagging on the weak, nerdy joke. "You're awful."

Lauren smiled. "I know. Don't tell anyone."

The Balam crossed the center of her chest, over her heart. "I'm your man, boss."

From the pocket of her track jacket came a harsh buzzing sound. Lauren answered the phone and Kenzi's shouts leapt from the tiny speaker. The doctor's dark eyes went round and wide.

"Where are you? Kenzi! Tell me where you are!"

She started pacing in small circles, listening to Kenzi's frantic recap of events. Sharon stepped back, gave Lauren room to move and think.

"Okay, I'm on my way," Lauren said, in her most reassuring voice. "I want you to put _major pressure_ above that leg wound. All your weight, if you can. You can do this! You can!"

She took the phone away from her ear and Sharon heard sobbing through the speaker. Silent tears ran down Lauren's cheeks. The doctor took a breath and gathered herself, then spoke again as if she were the calmest human on Earth.

"Kenzi, just listen to me and do exactly what I tell you. Straddle Bo and lay your shinbone across her bikini line, right above the bite. Now press down, let your weight settle onto that point… good. Is the bleeding slower now? Good. Take it easy, Kenzi. You're doing fine, Bo is doing fine. I'm on my way."

Lauren cut the call and snatched a set of keys from her desk. She looked at Sharon with red eyes full of panic. "I have to go," she said. "Will you -"

Sharon waved off her concerns. "I got this place on lockdown. Go. Help your friend."

Lauren hesitated, looked toward the busy server and then toward the Ash's quiet, curtained patient bay. She pounded a fist against her thigh, as if to jumpstart her body into motion. Then she ran from the building and peeled out in her car, darting down sidestreets at breakneck, illegal speeds.

Though her only cogent thoughts were of Bo, on some level, the drive felt like a jailbreak.

XXxxXX

"Things are happening, Dyson, things above your pay grade," Serena began. "Pieces are moving. You can get behind them and push or get knocked off the board – but you _must choose._"

He wanted to laugh or run or bare his fangs and rip out her throat – all stupid, impossible options, animal options. He needed to think like a cop instead, get her talking. "I can't choose anything… until I know what's in it for me," he said, offering a cautious smile.

Serena grinned and nodded, as if she knew Dyson would be reasonable. "For starters, more money. Once the coffers are raided, our wealth will be distributed fairly," she said. "The old families rest on their fortunes while we serve them like slaves. That's gonna change, and fast, once we control the cash."

_Explains why they're targeting the money men_, he realized. _But Lauren said most of the Light assets have been relocated to emergency positions, liquid accounts that only she and the Ash can access… shit. Means they'll take her. Keep her alive until they get the money. _

Dyson kept his face stone-still. "More money, more problems. What else you got?"

Serena rolled her eyes and pressed on. "How about freedom? Relaxed regulation of human predation, and no restrictions on association between clans. The branding of Fae as Light or Dark will cease and we will simply be _Fae_, judged as we live and not as we are labeled."

He raised his eyebrows, amused by the scope of her group's ambition. "I'm all for trashing the two-party system, but will the Dark get on board?"

"Their voice will be our voice. The clans will merge slowly. Once the Ash and the Morrigan are deposed and exiled, they will be replaced with worthy Elders."

Dyson had to laugh, imagining the Morrigan taken unawares by a bunch of turncoat thugs who had decided she was little more than a Fae version of Evita Peron. "Will we get to vote for these worthy Elders?"

Serena smirked. Dyson's phone buzzed again; she ignored the call and tucked it into her coat pocket. "Still working out the details on that one. Gorrick says vote, Vinata says appointment. Tomato, tomahto."

He didn't point out that her flippancy was ignorant and inappropriate. Serena obviously didn't care that she was in the employ of aspiring dictators, but Dyson intended to throw a monkey wrench into the works if he could. He eased one hand behind his back to the butt of his gun. "Do you have a mission statement? Manifesto? Anything I can take home and study?"

The former mercenary, who knew Dyson quite well from their years of black ops work, sparked up a two-handed fireball and cradled the mass of flame inches from his face. Bits of his beard singed and crackled in the heat.

"You're a good soldier and I don't want to lose you, but please believe that I will _incinerate _you if you fuck with me," she warned. "Hands on the table."

Slowly, Dyson complied. His jaw trembled as he struggled to calm his wolf. "This is a lot to take in," he said evenly. "How do you plan to get the money? I thought it was hidden."

Serena shook her head and sighed. "That's where the bandits come in, stupid. Gorrick worked out a trade: we kill the money men, the dacoits suck out all the information we need, and we deliver something they've wanted for years."

Dyson quirked a brow; he knew that Serena couldn't stop now. "The formula for Coke?"

"Maybe," she said, rolling the little fireball from hand to hand. "Whatever it is, they're gonna pull it out of Dr. Lewis's head tonight. And you get to watch."

He shut his eyes. Wondered if it was worth it. And went for his gun.

That's when it all went to hell.

Serena's fireball engorged with panic fuel and engulfed the table. He fired three rounds at Serena, all of which melted to lead and copper dribbles. One of her goons rushed up alongside and fired two tranquilizer darts into Dyson's chest.

At the bar, the other goon grabbed Dave Hubbard and snapped his neck with a single, neat twist. He slung Hubbard's body over one massive shoulder and clomped through the rear exit.

The tranq darts worked fast. Dyson was seeing double and slanting sideways when the second thug scooped him up in a fireman's carry and rushed him out the back door.

The last thing he saw before losing consciousness was Serena throwing massive gouts of flame at the pub, setting it alight. Dyson heard screaming and knew she had barricaded all of the human witnesses inside - more casualties of the latest inane Fae insurrection.

He went to sleep wishing he was inside the bar with them, burning until the whole ridiculous world just _stopped_.

TBC


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

As corrosive venom dissolved her body from the inside, the pain outstripped every bad thing Bo had felt before. Maybe it was so bad, she thought, because it was every bad thing all at once: fire and freezing and a million piercing stabs, coupled with terrible dread that there would be no recovery this time - no miraculous Fae healing, no stitches and medicine, no soup and ginger ale recovery in a soft bed.

Her life was ticking down to the last few minutes, which she would evidently spend writhing on the painted cement floor of a nightclub bathroom with downtempo music playing her offstage. To sum up, she was royally fucked.

At least she'd die underneath a beautiful woman, Bo perversely mused, and while this young woman was no lover, she cared more fiercely than any friend Bo had ever known. She looked up at Kenzi and tried to smile, tried to let her know that it was okay. Even though this was a messy, brutal, _totally_ _fucking painful _way to check out, it actually could be worse. Bo had always assumed she would die alone.

"You're okay. You're doing fine," Kenzi lied. Her blue eyes were bloodshot and damp; she'd only just stopped crying. She pressed her shin down hard above Bo's leg wound, trying to slow the loss of femoral blood. "Lauren said this would work, and she's never wrong, right? You just… just _stay_."

Bo wanted to keep a brave face, but the snakebite toxin was a relentless acid burn, raking her insides like rusty razors. She slammed her fists against the floor and bit back a sickening scream. Blood stormed in her ears. Bo imagined this was like diving into a vat of molten metal, burning and drowning at once, unable to sense anything but pain until the merciful end.

Kenzi grabbed her by the jacket front and shook her, shouted frantic, muffled nonsense… and then it was all gone.

Everything became nothing. Time was a joke. Bo turned circles in a dark and spiraling void, and would forever. She barely understood this before the spiral spit her out and she woke inside her dizzy, gasping flesh with _life _rushing down her throat. Like pressing water on the mad desert wanderer or forcing breath into the drowned, someone was kissing her mouth with artless urgency.

Operating on pure survival instinct, the succubus began to feed, heedless of the source. Rising up blindly, she pulled hard at the well of energy, grasping and biting and kissing until she felt relief, a slight and wondrous easing of her pain, and then – all too soon – the vital chi flow became a noxious, choking stream of smoke.

She stopped feeding and shrank away, violently coughing. When she opened her eyes, Bo found Kenzi slumped against the bathroom door, staring at her. Her lips were red, mauled and swollen, and the protective Koushang pendant dangled from her hand.

Bo's lingering primal instinct told her to move, to take the amulet and attack. She could drain Kenzi, and then overpower another human outside, and then perhaps just one more to be whole again... and maybe a fourth to top off the tank. She could strut away from this dive not merely alive, but powerful. She could hunt that snake Fae tonight and skin him for boot leather, make jewelry of his teeth and sell that shit on Etsy. She could do _anything_.

_Three_ _humans_, _four at most. Candy from babes. They'll die smiling, coming in their pants, and you will feel So. Fucking. Good. _

This counsel sounded familiar (like Aoife's mad, persuasive purr) and Bo felt shame knowing these thoughts sprang from her own frightened mind. Guilt and anger suffused her voice as she spoke to Kenzi. "Stupid… I could have _killed you._"

"I'm a gambler," Kenzi said. She displayed the very effective ancient trinket and shrugged. "I picked your pocket and rolled the dice."

Unwilling to argue further, Bo laid back and stared at the ceiling. Her inner thigh wound still bled, albeit more slowly, and her bitten arm still throbbed. Inside, the venomous pain had diffused to a thready burn, but she could already feel it regrouping. Kenzi's selfless gambit bought her a few more lucid moments, and Bo didn't want to waste them.

"You are a mean, stubborn, klepto crackpot," she told her best friend. "And I love you."

"Don't," Kenzi said, shaking her head and sniffling. "Just save your strength and shut up."

"Can't make me," Bo said.

"Can so."

"Liar. You shot your wad molesting me back to life."

"Hey, the molesting was all you, suckmonster." Kenzi gingerly rubbed her jaw. "Your bionic tongue loosened my molars."

Bo chuckled; she hadn't heard that one before. "You're welcome."

"_You're_ welcome," Kenzi parroted. "Let's not make this a habit, okay? Kissing you feels mega wrong – and not because you're a chick. It's weirder than that."

"I know," Bo agreed. "We're not even the same species or whatever, but you're my blood. It's weird because we're family."

Kenzi rolled her eyes and looked away. "If you're steering this toward goodbye, I'm not having it."

"Too bad, 'cause I need to say this," Bo began solemnly. "I spent ten years alone and confused, feeling like the world's biggest freak. Wasn't until a few months ago that my life finally started making sense. I learned what I really am, met my lunatic mom, got brave enough to let people in. I stopped feeling so lost all the time. All this happened after I met _you_."

"Yeah, and look at you now," Kenzi said. She swiped a wet track from her cheek. "I'm a jinx, always have been."

"Well, you've been my good luck charm."

"You're delusional. And I'm getting nauseous."

Bo gritted her teeth, struggling to project sincerity. "But you're the sunshine on my flower; you've helped me grow. I need you to know -"

"Bo, I swear to Gaga, I'm going to _kick you_."

"Kenzi… you're the wind beneath my wings."

About then, she realized that Bo was screwing with her, quoting saccharine Hallmark cards and easy listening classics to make this easier. The gesture was silly and lovely and it murdered her composure. Kenzi cursed under her breath and Bo sniggered and Kenzi laughed until she sobbed - a precursor to a seriously ugly, shoulder-shaking cry. She leaned back against the door just as it shoved forward, bumping the steel trashcan and giving her skull a tough knock.

"_God!_ _It's still ocupado!"_ she yelled.

"Kenzi? It's me," Lauren called from beyond the barricaded door.

XXxxXX

Sharon stepped into the lab hallway and pulled the curtains closed on the Ash's patient bay. When she turned, she found Serena standing behind her. The Balam yelped in surprise and her claws involuntarily unsheathed.

Serena took a step back and raised a hand to calm her. "Sorry, had to come in quiet."

The nurse eased her claws away, but her yellow eyes narrowed. "Mission accomplished. What's up?"

Serena didn't respond. She looked around the empty lab and listened keenly, hearing only the beeps and whirrs of the Ash's monitors and ventilator. "Where is Dr. Lewis?"

After a moment's hesitation, Sharon told her the truth. Serena was Light security head, after all; fibbing to her would have consequences. "She got a call about twenty minutes ago. A friend was in trouble, needed help. She bolted."

"Probably Detective Hale," Serena said, sounding nonchalant. "We've… lost touch with him."

"Wasn't Hale. The succubus with the silly name. She was hurt. It sounded pretty bad." Sharon cocked her head and blinked. "Why do you need the doctor?"

Serena paused, appraising the curious nurse, and then sighed as if delivering dreadful news. "We have conclusive evidence that Dr. Lewis colluded with Dark agents to steal vast sums of money from the Light Fae. The High Council has ordered me to arrest her so that she might answer for these crimes."

Sharon gaped for a few seconds, and then she just laughed. "You cannot be serious!" she said, once she got her breath back. "She's the most allegiant human I've ever met, and the Ash trusts her. What you're saying makes no sense."

"Even the Ash can make mistakes," Serena snapped, clearly put-out by this underling's dissent. "Case in point: he trusted _me_."

She snapped her fingers and three Light agents entered the hall. One produced a pistol and fired a tranq dart into Sharon's back. The Balam jerked forward and fell to the floor, mewling angrily until she lost consciousness.

"Apply four-point restraints and lock her down with the rest," Serena instructed one agent, then pointed to another. "You stake out that shanty where the succubus lives. If Lewis is there with her, call me. And keep sending out feelers for Hale. He's gotta come up for air sometime."

The second agent nodded, rushed away, and Serena looked to the third. "You stay put. Our medical transport team is coming tonight for the Ash. If Lewis shows, bring her to the villa – now listen carefully - _unharmed_."

The muscled giant dipped his head to show assent, and then posed a question. "What if the succubus interferes?"

Serena sighed and cocked a brow. "You have a live weapon?"

He patted the .357 holstered beneath his suit jacket. "Yup."

"Then keep your distance and shoot her until your gun clicks," Serena said. "That bitch is not a reclamation project; she's trouble we don't need."

XXxxXX

Though she was well-ready for her pain to end – whether through death or _deus ex machina_ – Bo felt a heady jolt of hope upon hearing Lauren's voice. Kenzi seemed to feel it, too, for she flung the door wide, pointed at bloody, broken Bo and demanded that the physician effect repairs immediately.

"Fix her and I'll be your best friend forever," Kenzi vowed.

"I don't respond well to threats," Lauren carelessly retorted, causing Bo to smile. The doctor shrugged off a black military-style MOLLE backpack, looked over her patient, and swallowed hard. "So… you're a complete mess."

"Yeah," Bo said softly. "Fae snakebites hurt like a bastard."

Lauren donned gloves and examined the wounds, gently palpating upper arm and inner thigh while Bo grimaced and held her breath. "One to ten, how's the pain?"

Bo couldn't respond rationally. She _whimpered_, and that was answer enough. Lauren unzipped her trauma bag and went to work, first injecting Bo with vivid red dope that hazed over the hurt, then tightly wrapping both wounds with pressure bandages, and finally cleaning away gore with sterile damps until Bo looked somewhat presentable.

Kenzi snagged several of the damps and tidied up as well. Once everyone was ready to face the public again, Lauren tucked all the bloody refuse into a red plastic zip bag and stowed it in the backpack. She produced a set of keys and passed them and her bag to Kenzi.

"My car is in the west alley down the block," she said. "Pull around front and keep it running."

Kenzi shouldered the MOLLE pack and fondled the silver key ring, which bore a Jaguar XJ logo. Her eyes sparkled as she waggled the keys at Bo. Lauren apparently had good taste in women and cars, _and_ she damn well showed up when you screamed for help. Three more check marks in Kenzi's finicky good books.

"Yo, doc," she called, and tossed Lauren the Koushang amulet. "Caveat emptor."

On the doctor's bemused look, Kenzi winked at her and slipped away. Lauren zipped the necklace into a breast pocket and crouched over Bo. "Can you get up?"

"For you, always." Bo gave her a druggy, lazy leer. "That red shit is the _bomb_."

"It's a nuclear-option opiate, but it doesn't last. We better move." Lauren slid an arm beneath Bo's back and helped her sit up, then pulled her to a wobbly, quasi-upright position. Bo draped her right arm across Lauren's shoulders and they carefully edged through the bathroom door and hobbled down the sticker-strewn hall of no fame.

"Thank you. For coming," Bo said.

Lauren tightened her arms around Bo's waist. "For you, always," she said.

If Bo had been less distracted, the double entendre would not have gone unremarked, but she was onto something else. While gripping Lauren's soft cotton track jacket, she noticed the doctor had traded lab coat and heels for yoga pants and flat trainers. While sober, Bo found the sporty look very fetching; on drugs, it was the sexiest thing _ever_.

"You always look so hot in dumb-people clothes," she said.

Lauren smiled over her choice of words. "Not hot, just sweaty."

The succubus weaved closer and leaned into the crook of Lauren's neck. Her warm nape held salty-sweet traces of earlier exertions, and Bo greedily drank in the scent. Floating in a moment of amnesia, she almost forgot that she was near death. She felt fuzzy and loopy and safe…and hungry. "Some humans smell like wet dogs when they sweat," she announced.

"Oh." Lauren flinched a little, readjusted her arms. "Sorry."

"Not you," Bo clarified, and inhaled deeply again. "You smell like breakfast."

Lauren missed a step and stumbled back against the graffiti wall. Bo fell against her, pinning her with dead weight and black eyes that pulled like vortices above a sinking ship.

"Before Kenzi dragged me back, I think I died for a little while," Bo whispered. "There wasn't any tunnel or light. I just went round and round in the dark."

Lauren's chin trembled but her gaze kept steady; she looked determined, ready to try anything. Her lips parted as the succubus edged closer, baring her teeth…

"Please don't kiss me," Bo whispered, stopping short.

Lauren shook her head, stroked Bo's cheek. "Just take a little. You need it."

"I need _too much,_" Bo reasoned, while marveling at the vivid desire radiating from Lauren. "You would give too much. We wouldn't stop."

The awful truth was this: to live, the succubus must feed, and to feed when mortally injured, she needed a few strong Fae or several expendable humans. Strong Fae were thin on the ground tonight, and the only humans nearby were innocent strangers, one dear friend, and one woman who routinely crazed her loins and muddied her brain.

Bo hid her face below Lauren's ear, breathing dreams, craving sex and love and family and all the messy horrors of life so intensely that she could taste chi sweating through the skin of Lauren's neck… only, that was impossible. Feeding didn't work like that.

_Siphoning chi is an art, little girl. It works however you work it,_ her latent instinct purred.

Lauren obviously felt the osmotic feed and liked it, even if she didn't recognize the sensation. She shuddered, clenched fistfuls of Bo's hair. With her body, Lauren was unconsciously urging her to take more - grinding her hips, seeking skin with her fingertips, baring her throat to a monster that would destroy her to save itself.

Bo squirmed in her arms, extended her tongue to lick Lauren's throat, and pulled back just shy of contact. She dropped her head against Lauren's shoulder. "_Fuck. _I can't tell if you're trying to save me or kill us both."

Lauren groaned and banged her head back against the wall. She kissed Bo anyway, chastely, on the temple. "You need to feed to live. I don't know how else to help you," she admitted. "The toxin is -"

"Not in the database," Bo finished. "Doesn't matter. This stuff is kicking my ass so fast, I'd croak before we got back to the lab."

"So what do we do?" Lauren asked. Her eyes shone with tears.

"Get a room," a third party suggested.

Bo and Lauren looked down the hall and saw a couple – a lanky mohawked guy in a Ramones tee, and a cross-looking hipster chick standing with arms akimbo. Bo just rolled her eyes and told the girl to grow up. Lauren fisted her hands in the back of Bo's leather jacket.

"Some people still use the bathroom for peeing," the girl said, adjusting her fake glasses and stomping past to take care of business.

The guy, however, lingered, enjoying the sights. "Cosplay?" he guessed, waving at Bo's bloody bandages and visible weaponry. "What's your world?"

Lauren was lost, but Bo grinned as her familiarity with Kenzi's gaming obsession finally came useful. "Development Deal with The Devil," she said. "I'm a stuntwoman and she's my personal trainer; Hollywood love in the time of zombies."

"Hotness," he said, smiling. He pointed toward the bathroom and the hairpinned grouch peeing therein. "She's not my girlfriend. I am not with her."

Bo nodded, looked him over, and noticeably perked up. Whether due to the death bump or the good drugs or feeling _almost certain_ that she had pulled chi from Lauren through simple contact, somehow Bo hatched a brilliant, preposterous idea.

"How long before the red magic wears off and I start praying for death again?" she asked her doctor/trainer.

Lauren regarded her warily. "Ten minutes, maybe less. Why?" She looked toward the robustly healthy young man – judged so by his lean muscle mass, clear eyes, and partial erection – and was troubled to realize she was sizing him up like a spring lamb. Less surprisingly, Bo appeared to be doing the same thing. "What are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking I need to be surrounded by people, lots of people who will dance very close to me and share positive energy _until I feel better_," Bo said pointedly. "Savvy?"

The doctor blanched and squeezed Bo's waist. "How would that even work?"

"Damned if I know. You should probably supervise."

"Like a medical experiment."

"Only with more krumping. I envision a performance art project built on loud music, group foreplay, and nobody dying," Bo explained.

Lauren blinked rapidly, processing the sketchy concept. "That's a tall order."

Bo shrugged. "Yeah, well. Mother advised me to be ambitious."

Even if she had doubts or concerns, Lauren seemed relieved that Bo wanted to go down swinging, as it were. "Fine. Tell me what to do."

Bo turned and winked at Mohawk Ramone, pointing him toward the dance floor. "See you out there?"

"Fuck yeah," he said, and eased away into the shadows.

The succubus then took the Koushang from Lauren's breast pocket and draped the chain around the woman's neck. She touched a fingertip to Lauren's lips, gently coaxed open her mouth, and laid the chi-binding amulet on her tongue. "I read that charms get stronger if you put them in your mouth," she said, "which is true of so many things."

Lauren rolled her eyes, but played along. Bo stroked her chin and Lauren closed her mouth. Bo gave her a quick peck on the lips.

"You're my cooler," Bo said, "Whatever happens out there, you don't kiss me unless I really lose my shit. Then you bring the kryptonite."

Lauren clenched the Koushang in her teeth, drew a deep breath, and nodded. Bo leaned into her and they slowly made their way onto the Gatekeeper floor.

Strobe lights flashed green and blue over a crowd dozens deep. Dancers packed close and moved to a slow trance groove, swaying like a copse of willows in a breeze.

In their midst, a hurricane readied for landfall.

TBC


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

With each faltering step, every labored breath, Lauren could feel Bo dying in her arms. She wanted to scream.

Even if the succubus couldn't feel it herself, was numbed to the pain thanks to powerful opiates, her body was quickly losing ground. The snakebite toxin continued needling holes in her veins, causing multiple hemorrhages, starving her organs, killing the Fae more slowly than human victims but just as surely. It was all Lauren could do to stay positive, to hold Bo upright on the dance floor and assist her in one last desperate play for survival - whatever form that play might take.

"Don't let me kill anybody," Bo said, looking her straight in the eyes. She touched the chain leading to the Koushang amulet, still hidden in Lauren's mouth. "Promise you'll shut me down."

Lauren glanced around at the club full of strangers and wondered if there was a villain among them, someone who didn't deserve to go home tonight. Just one would be enough to keep Bo alive just a little bit longer and buy time to develop an anti-toxin... but there was no way to know. A tear trickled from her eye, and she nodded.

Bo brushed her cheek dry and managed to smile. "Chin up; we're not done yet," she said.

She turned in Lauren's arms and leaned back against her. It took a moment to adjust to the shotgun and pistol beneath Bo's jacket as they pressed into her stomach and chest. Beneath her fingers, patches of Bo's shirt felt stiff, thick with drying blood. She'd imagined holding Bo a hundred times, and though Lauren rarely hoped for soft landings or happy endings, none of her dreams had ever felt this bleak.

The music faded low and overhead tracker lights mellowed to cottony pink. The DJ's next spin opened with swelling heartbeat drums, and Bo began to rock and sway with the music. Lauren tentatively mirrored her movements, providing a flexible column of support – a backdrop more than a partner.

Bo turned her head slowly, making eye contact with as many people as possible. She stroked fingertips across the tops of Lauren's hands, moved her palms down her own thighs and back around to squeeze Lauren's hips. The doctor shuddered and felt faint.

She noticed several nearby dancers watching them - peeking, glancing, then gazing openly once Bo met their eyes. Weak as she was, Bo's sensuality still emitted a magnetic pull. Males and females, greens and growns, moved slightly closer to their partners – and closer to Bo. They seemed curious, if not ensnared.

Bo tipped her head back, tickling Lauren's cheek with her eyelashes. "Kiss my neck," she whispered, and licked Lauren's earlobe. "Bite me a little."

Lauren gulped. She sensed danger, but chose to trust Bo's instincts. With effort, she unclenched her teeth and let the Koushang drop free; the amulet thumped wetly onto her chest, sliding against the Ash's symbol in a tangle of chains over her heart. She closed her eyes and opened her mouth against Bo's skin, kissing her jawline and neck.

The succubus tasted of fever sweat, chemical bitterness from the sterile cleaning cloths, and a hint of polluted coppery blood. Everything about that emulsion should have been wrong, revolting, yet Lauren's mouth watered for more. She extended her tongue and licked along a stressed tendon.

_Longissimus Capitus_. She recognized it, named it, kissed it hungrily. _Beautiful._

Bo trembled in her arms. Her eyes drifted shut and her head fell back against Lauren's shoulder, completely baring her neck. Lauren felt the heavy warmth of arousal settling in; her breath slowed and she blindly swayed to the music swelling within her own body. She listened to it, caught the rhythm, and grazed Bo's throat with the edges of her teeth. The succubus loudly moaned, and Lauren felt the heat of bodies as dancers moved closer, like acolytes answering a call to worship.

Hands lit on Lauren's shoulders, friendly and overly familiar. A long, lean body tucked tight against her back - a man, from the feel and smell. As he leaned forward, she felt the brush of his spiky mohawk on her neck, the hint of excited hardness against her backside, and she knew him as the young man from the hallway, the fellow who so eagerly declared himself single and available.

Again, it should have felt wrong, revolting to her own nature, but Lauren curved her back against his chest and drew him near, let his want – his energy – merge with the intoxicating heat she felt for Bo. Maybe it would build and transfer somehow… maybe that was what Bo was aiming for.

_Heat energy travels by conduction,_ Lauren told herself. _It moves from a higher temperature to a lower temperature. We're the higher temperature, she's the lower. If a group generates enough chi energy, theoretically, Bo could feed from the pool without draining any individual to depletion._

The realization made Lauren laugh out loud. She kissed Bo's cheek, slipped a hand beneath her shirt and splayed fingers across her stomach like an anchor. "I've got you," she said. "Do what you need to do."

Bo said nothing. She turned her face to Lauren and her eyes glittered ice blue, starved for heat. She grinned, bared her teeth, and moved their three-bodied knot into the tightening throng.

As the dancers made contact with hips and shoulders and elbows, Bo's hunger seemed to infect them. Strangers drew near, guileless, offering themselves up like lambs. They reached out to touch the succubus, eager for a sensation they couldn't understand. Lauren had felt it before, faintly, when she and Bo made love – a dizzying, drunken sensation like a tongue trailing joy from clit to brain – and she understood their madness.

Their knot of three – Bo and Lauren and Mohawk Ramone – kept moving among the dancers, turning and reeling as people willingly tore away little pieces of their life force and strafed Bo with cries and groping hands and desperate, quickly broken kisses.

Lauren felt the succubus swell with life. Her body straightened and Bo stood on her own power. Lauren tried to keep her moving, to prevent any single contact from becoming harmful, but it grew progressively more difficult. The dancers were stoned in a way they'd never experienced, and they wanted more.

By the third promenade around the floor, gridlock had set in and the chi swarm was a physical thing. Delicate filaments of light drifted through the air, trailed after Bo and curled sweetly into her mouth like incense smoke. Her body moved easily, undulating with the skyline musical rhythms, and she appeared to feel absolutely no pain. Her wounded arm and leg seemed mobile and strong again.

_Heat energy travels by radiation, too_, Lauren mused upon seeing the vaporous hints of energy. _If this was her plan, it goddamn well worked. _

She felt the truth of this supposition coursing through her own body, manifesting as the mother of all contact highs. Evidently, the Koushang pendant could bind chi to the wearer, but it did not prevent the absorption of extraneous chi into the wearer's body. Lauren felt amazingly good, bordering on giddy. If Bo felt even a fraction of this lightness, this helium buoyancy, then Lauren's arms around her were probably the only thing thwarting actual levitation.

At the caboose position of their three car love train, Mohawk Ramone was feeling no pain himself. His sweaty hands rolled under Lauren's jacket, intently making tracks into her pants. She sobered just enough to realize this was intolerable, pulled away from him and wedged herself between Bo and her ardent admirers.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

Bo shone like she'd swallowed the Tarantula Nebula and her smile was a glory of life, frozen in a rigor of ecstasy… and yet she looked scared. Lauren hadn't noticed before, too lost in her own haze and the effort to keep them moving, but Bo was shivering.

"I don't know. Maybe I took too much," Bo said, sounding fearful as the crowd surged around her, closing in and begging to give even more. Bo shuddered and heaved like she was going to be sick. "_Get me out of here._"

Lauren nodded and pulled her close, trying to protect her as they moved through the crowd. Inebriated and confused, the supplicants begged Bo to stay, shouted pleas for more and grabbed at her clothes in desperation.

The human doctor shielded her Fae patient, firmed her jaw and lowered her shoulder, bulling a path toward the glowing red exit sign.

XXxxXX

Kenzi jammed on the brakes and the Jaguar squealed to a halt just outside the Gatekeeper front entrance. She was embarrassed by how long it took her to figure out the key fob and disarm the security measures to get the high-tech sedan moving, but she hadn't stolen a car in several months and was a bit out of practice. Plus, this car – with its paddle shifter and cool blue vodka bar lighting and sinfully soft leather – was way out of her backwater chop shop's league; Yuri would send her packing without offering a dime.

Anyway, Kenzi kept the car idling in gear, eager to speed Bo off for medical treatment… but Bo never came out of the club. In fact, _no one_ exited the club, which was passing strange. While she waited, Kenzi tried calling and texting Dyson and Hale again, but they still weren't answering. Several dead-silent minutes passed, and then a few more, and Kenzi got fed up. She shut the Jag down and ducked back into the club, and _immediately_ wished she had just waited in the damned car.

Though the pink light was dim and the loud music disorienting, Kenzi clearly discerned a score of people clustered in the center of the dance floor sharing barely lawful carnal knowledge. And Bo was right in the middle of them, engaged in serial grinding and literally _shining_ like she had LEDs beneath her skin.

Kenzi had a moment of pure happiness where she realized that Bo might not die, that she'd found a way to heal her injuries without hurting anyone. But that feeling turned to mortification after the fifth random, gropey stranger stuck their tongue down her best friend's throat.

Lauren, the voice of reason and restraint, was no better. A too-young asshole with a mohawk was glued to her back, looking like he was drunk on fortified wine and the promise of a three-way. Before Kenzi could whistle or shout "Fire!" or anything, Lauren soured on her boycrush and started hustling Bo toward the exit.

Kenzi darted back outside and started the car, but there was another profoundly embarrassing delay. Practically the moment Dr. Hotpants cleared the front door, Bo pinned her against the Jaguar and kissed her like the world was ending. After a few seconds, Bo took a pull of energy from Lauren's mouth and it came out as dark, Koushang-tinted smoke. Bo reeled back, coughing and clutching her chest as if she'd been hit with a hammer. Once the spell passed, she righted herself, licked her lips, and rushed right back for more. Lauren's back slammed against the Jag's side door and she slipped low, like her knees had gone weak and the only thing holding her up was Bo's tongue.

Their captive audience inside the car was equal parts squicked and fascinated. As girl-on-girl kisses went, Kenzi had to admit it was pretty intense. Open mouths, visible teeth, fists in hair - objectively hot, but not something Kenzi wanted to be in the middle of. Yet if Bo's crazy enthusiasm and black pearl eyes were any indication, nothing fuckable would be safe around her tonight, and Kenzi had already had her share of uncomfortable smooches for the evening. Discretion being the better part of valor, she slid across the console and ducked out the passenger door.

Kenzi rounded the front bumper, loudly cleared her throat, and asked for cab fare. With great difficulty, Bo broke off from the kiss and dropped her face into the crook of Lauren's neck. She inhaled, said something that sounded like "_breakfast_," and smiled at Kenzi with a strangely lovely serenity.

"You saved my life twice tonight," she said. "I meant what I said. I love you."

"Yeah, well." Kenzi sighed and looked up into the night sky, safely away from Bo's weird bedroom eyes. "I'm gonna jet before our nice family tie turns all Lannister-gross."

"Don't go home," Bo said. After digging around in her pockets for a bit, she tossed Kenzi a small roll of bills stained red at one end. "Cab, motel. You've still got my phone, so call Lauren when you get settled. Let me know where you are."

"What about Hale and Dyson?" Kenzi asked. "They're still radio silent. They might need help."

"I'll notify Light security. Serena will find them," Lauren said. She squeezed Bo's waist and smiled at Kenzi. "Don't worry. Fae are survivors."

Kenzi eyed the two women, knotted together like wet laundry, and she knew they weren't up for any rescue missions that didn't involve them saving the world with simultaneous orgasms. "Drive safe, doc," she said, and walked back into the club foyer to call a taxi.

XXxxXX

From the waist down, Bo was on fire, but from the waist up, she felt like she was flying.

She stood with one bare foot in the Jaguar's passenger seat, one foot between Lauren's thighs, and her bra-clad upper body catching the wind through the sunroof. In a feverish fit just after leaving the club, she'd peeled off her jacket and shirt and begged Lauren to open the roof so she wouldn't explode like a sweating stick of dynamite. The cold night air worked like a charm.

Not an hour before, she was fighting for her life, and then literally dying, and then dead in the black spiral hell, and then alive again but only just, and then drugged and then starving, and then stuffed so full of cheap dancehall chi that it boiled from her pores, and then there was Lauren and _that kiss _like venting steam from a pressure valve, and now there was a sky full of stars and she sailed beneath it, a mast on a fine English ship.

Bo was alive, saved and loved by stubborn women. Tonight, the world was a miracle machine.

"THIS IS AMAZING!" she shouted, throwing her arms wide and letting the wind rip through her hair. "WHEN I'M DONE WITH YOU, I'M GOING TO FUCK YOUR CAR!"

Lauren laughed and shifted gears, picking up speed as the lights ahead all went green.

She heard the hands-free system placing a call, heard Lauren speaking to someone, catching them up on the night's events and telling them to try and find Dyson and Hale. The woman on the line – (_Serena,_ Bo recalled, placing her as the shotgun-toting bitch who nearly torched the crack shack when that hallucinogenic spider bit her and Kenzi and Hale… man, her life was just _absurd_) – insisted that Lauren return to the labs immediately, though she wouldn't say why.

_No, the Ash is okay. No, everything is fine. No, don't worry about Dyson and Hale. Keep calm and carry on. Hup, hup, Doctor Lewis. Duty calls. Etc. and so on and so forth. Just come straight to the labs. _

Bo didn't like that idea at all, mainly because there was zero chance that Lauren would have sex with her in the labs. She would insist on medical tests and precautionary treatments and evidence gathering to identify the snake Fae attacker, and all Bo wanted to do was get her naked against a flat surface.

They wheeled into the parking garage at Buzzkill Central and Lauren cajoled Bo into leaving the car and then shamed her into behaving herself in the elevator. On the way up, Lauren opened a panel below the floor selector buttons and inserted an elaborate key into an equally tricky lock. Instead of stopping on the lab floor, the lift went up one level higher.

Soundlessly, the doors opened and Lauren stepped out. The only thing beyond the doors was a brick wall and a spiral iron staircase. Lauren turned and offered her hand to Bo.

Bo hung back, glancing with suspicion at the stairs. "What's up there? Quarantine?"

Lauren blinked slowly, tucked her tongue against the corner of her mouth. "My place," she said.

The succubus released a long, broken sigh. "Thank God," she said, and took Lauren's hand.

XXxxXX

Kenzi knocked again at the back door of the Dal Riata. After what seemed an eternity, she heard locks turning and the door opened perhaps an inch – just enough to see Trick's face.

"No," he said. "Go home. We're closed tonight."

"Trickster, you are not gonna believe the day I've had," Kenzi ranted, completely ignoring him. "A snake tried to eat Bo and she nearly died, then she chi-raped a club full of hipster idiots to get better, and Dyson and Hale are missing, and the Ash had light coming from his eyes and he talked to me but nobody believes me and I'm broke and need _buckets_ of cheap vodka so please_, please_ don't send me away into the cold, dark night alone and sober."

Trick narrowed his eyes, skeptical of her story. From somewhere behind the barman, a muffled voice barked an order, and he nodded. "I should have never given you that free bar tab," he said to Kenzi, and opened the door.

"Thank you, kind sir," she said, fluttering her hands and bowing and scraping like an orphan granted an extra helping of gruel. She followed Trick through the storage area and into the bar. "You are generous and wise and – oh, shit."

Kenzi understood then, too late, why Trick tried to shoo her away. In the middle of the floor, Hale knelt with his hands cuffed behind his back. He looked like he'd caught a nasty beating recently. The detective scowled and looked toward the probable purveyor of that beating.

Seated on a barstool, holding a very large and bloodstained pistol, was the Morrigan.

She waved the gun at Trick and he moved beside Hale. She kept both men clearly within her eyeline as she downed a tumbler of iced whiskey and pressed the cold glass against her swollen, bruised cheek. Wearing a torn black pencil skirt and a tattered red silk blouse, she looked like her evening could have gone better. Kenzi said as much, and the Dark Fae leader chuckled.

"Must be going around," she said, and slid a bottle of Belvedere down the bar.

Kenzi eyed the forbidden top shelf booze and made a pleading face at Trick. He rolled his eyes and waved the okay, and she filled a glass and knocked it back so fast that even the Morrigan took notice. The Dark Fae smiled a little, wincing as her cheek contracted.

"So, Dorothy – pull up a chair and tell Auntie M. and the Lollipop Guild all about your very bad day," the Morrigan said, and it was not a friendly invitation. "Maybe we can piece together what _exactly _is afoot so that later, when all this is over, I know _exactly_ who to bathe in acid."

Kenzi took another drink, wished fervently that she had joined Bo and Lauren instead, even if it had resulted in the world's most awkward threesome, and told the Morrigan everything.

TBC


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 13

Bo rolled onto her back, gasping and sweating and slightly crazed. Her energy levels remained spiky and frightening, but if Lauren's first _treatment_ was predictive, she'd level out by the third dose. For the moment, Bo felt like a placid lunatic, sedated by a surprisingly ruthless fuck on the world's cleanest kitchen floor. If the protective Koushang was responsible for Lauren's new lack of caution, then it was indeed an object of wonder and Bo was mad for it.

Lauren slowly kissed her back to sanity, mouth caressing from pelvis to belly to breast, and slid up to coil her within hot, slick limbs. Sometimes her life was so good Bo wanted to cry.

And yet she worried, just a little, over Fae threats and missing friends, over the present and the future and a dozen hovering unknowns. "Question," she said, brushing nails along her lover's arm. "When the Ash wakes up, what's he gonna say about this?"

Lauren didn't look bothered, merely uncertain. "I don't know. You're sort of…unprecedented."

"Oh." Bo liked the sound of that. She grinned and tightened their embrace. "Nice."

The doctor nuzzled her throat and nodded. "Very."

"Just a heads-up – I don't really give a damn what he says," Bo admitted. "He's not gonna stop us. He might obliterate me, but I'll fight him."

For a few moments, Lauren stilled and felt absent. "You don't want to do that."

"Yeah, I kind of do." Bo moved a hand through Lauren's hair, gently lifted her head until their eyes met. "I'm sick of other people saying whether or not I get to be in love. I have a say in this, and I don't want to wait anymore."

Lauren did a vague double take, blinked at Bo like she heard her wrong. "I don't understand."

"What's to understand? Let's just do this. I mean, god, you work to the point where your brain starts melting and I almost die every other week_. _Right now, we're alive and okay and together and I feel brave and stupid." Bo flashed her sweetest, truest smile. "Be in love with me?"

Her lips quirked into a funny, peeved frown and Lauren sighed. "I'm a little ahead of you, there."

Bo touched her cheek, brought her in for a slow, sweltering kiss. "I can catch up."

XXxxXX

Dyson awoke in darkness, weak and hurting. Groggy from the tranquilizer darts, his senses activated slowly. He could tell he had been stripped naked and bound strappado – hanged by his wrists with arms behind back, cuffed at the ankles – and his shoulders screamed in pain. His toes barely touched the warm cement floor. A tight chain, lashed to something overhead, encircled his throat.

In the pitch black, even his wolf retinas starved for light and could discern no details of his prison. He coughed and explored the room with sound, guessing it to be a steel-walled enclosure perhaps twelve feet square. The room smelled strongly of venison and fish, and the circulating air felt hot and dry.

Soon, he heard footsteps approaching and a door opened, flooding the room with light. Squinting, he watched two large Fae drag a woman into the cell, throw her roughly to the floor, and step outside. The woman, barefoot in a fitted black evening gown, rolled onto her knees and tried to stand, but Gael strolled in and slapped her back down.

He glanced at Dyson and wiggled his fingers like the blow had stung his lone, precious hand. His jaw looked bruised and his mouth was bleeding. "Hard head on this one," Gael said, and shoved the woman flat with a sharp kick to the back. She collapsed and gasped as weight fell on her mangled, broken left hand.

Gael squatted beside her and whispered words not audible to the guards, though Dyson heard him quite plainly. "You've proven a fool. Don't compound the error by playing at heroics." He petted her flowing gilt-brown hair, stroked her back with creepy, sugary tenderness. "Please reconsider my offer."

With that, Gael rose and turned to his other prisoner. His eyes roamed over Dyson's contorted body and he smiled, enjoying the sight of a proud enemy brought low. Dyson guessed what was coming and tensed just as Gael drove an uppercut into his solar plexus, knocking the air from his lungs.

"Stupid berk," Gael said. He frowned and brushed his hand across his tailored trousers to clean Dyson's sweat from his knuckles. "Wolves make terrible pets. Serena will come to her senses soon enough." He departed and the guards locked the door behind him.

In the arid darkness, Dyson pulled shallow breaths through his nose and spoke to the woman. "_Ça va, _Justine?"

She moaned and shifted around, slumped against the wall. "_Pas très bien_," she replied in a parched whisper. "I'm dying."

"Come on. Gael doesn't hit _that_ hard."

"Fuck you," she muttered. "This was my grandfather's game curing room. A bit longer in this dry heat and I will go mad and die of fever. Gael knows this. He's withheld water, weakening me, trying to break me."

Dyson knew Gael was a sadist and commiserating with his latest victim wouldn't make either of them hurt any less. Best to ignore it, move on. "Serena told me a little," he said, "but I'm guessing that with junior's big mouth, you know a lot more."

"If I knew so much, I would be on the other side of that door. Gael was right; I am a fool," Justine said. She paused and sniffed the air. In the silence, one could hear the sweat drip from Dyson's face and plop softly on the floor. "You're perspiring."

"Drank a lot today," he said, and then realized this might sound like a taunt to the drought-stricken nymph. "Sorry."

"Not at all. In fact, I must apologize for what I am about to do," Justine said, and crawled close behind him. "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

Mindful of her broken hand, she cautiously touched his sweaty calves and her palms soaked up the humidity like greedy sponges. After the first timid hit, her hands became deft and thorough, traversing his thighs, abdomen and chest, combing through his hair, rubbing his aching shoulders and sliding down his back, pulling in every bit of moisture his body had shed.

Far from experiencing this as an erotic massage, Dyson felt like a hatchback getting dried by chamois cloths at the car wash. Nonetheless, he soon forgot about his pain, and his cock stood at half-mast by the time Justine took her hands away.

Even though they couldn't see each other in the jet dark, he felt certain she was aware of his arousal. Women like her (confident, relaxed within their skin) could just _tell_, could read breath, tension and demeanor as easily as Bo read sexual energy.

"I taste rum," Justine said, and sighed a little. "_Un dernier verre._ Thank you for that."

"We get out of this, let's split a bottle," he said, and thought about ice hockey until his member calmed.

The nymph ruffled Dyson's hair, stumbled away and slid down the wall. In crackling whispers, Justine shared her perspective of the coup – from the first inkling of trouble when Serena mysteriously ordered her to lure Dr. Lewis here to the family villa, to Serena's anger over her failure and the revelation that Lauren would come to harm.

"They killed all those humans, the bankers and lawyers. There are three fresh bodies waiting in my mother's kitchen," Justine said. "The dacoits pramata will drain them like the others, allowing the rebels to plunder hidden accounts. Lauren is framed for theft of Light fortunes, which smears and discredits the Ash. Tonight, they give her to the bandits as payment for services rendered."

"Has anyone said what the bandits want from Lauren?" Dyson wondered.

"Vinata – she is very dramatic. She calls it 'an unholy human advance,' an idea which could tear the Fae asunder. Funny to me, the idea is _dormant - _a soggy bête noir. Lauren may live a hundred years and never have the thought at all."

"Hmm. With her brain, it's probably just a matter of time," Dyson mused.

Justine hummed in agreement. "She is quite clever. I know her a little. I like her very much."

Dyson didn't respond. It felt in poor taste to voice his dislike for a doomed human he had always considered an uppity, officious pain in the ass.

"This is to say, I cannot imagine Lauren using such knowledge to harm us," Justine continued. "When I learned of their plans for her, I protested. I thought Serena would hear reason… but I was mistaken."

Dyson wasn't surprised. Ironically, mutineers have no patience for dissension. "What's the angle for Gorrick and Vinata? They're already rich and powerful, so why raid the coffers?"

"Money is a means to an end; they seek to depose the Ash, establish themselves as leaders, and marry. Gorrick and Vinata have been lovers for an age," Justine bluntly revealed.

Dyson's shock was evident in how long he took to respond. Aside from their pre-Cambrian ages, Gorrick was a blubbery marine shifter with a face like a candle wax puddle, and southern Vinata was all scales and rattling tail. He just couldn't see how it was possible. "That's...bad."

"_Mais_ _oui_. Love is blind. They mated outside their pair bonds and produced children, but Nagi and Selk are not meant to breed. Their children are atrocities, murderous snakes that walk on two legs and bite with acid. Secretly, the Ash censured them and ordered the offspring killed. Vinata hid the children, bought them placement in a Dark assassin's guild."

Dyson grimaced and shook his head. Now that sounded like the Ash he knew, the imperious, pious being whose word was law, who sacrificed personal freedom and liberty for order and peace. This intractability might prove his downfall.

Justine stopped to take a few careful breaths through her hand, conserving moisture. "They will use the money to hire an army, to dissuade outsiders from protesting the coup. We who know the truth are captured or killed, the Morrigan took wing, and the Ash sleeps on. Who will sound the alarm beyond the counties in time to stop them?"

Dyson inquired after Hale, and Justine conveyed that he was missing and presumed injured after killing one of Gorrick's slithering bastards. "Our foes are taking casualties," Justine said. "Another assassin is on the grounds even now, dying from battle wounds. Your succubus broke his heart with a shotgun."

The news, and her phrasing, made him smile. Of course Hale and Bo would not go quietly; he felt proud of them for inflicting damage. "They'll find us," Dyson said, certain that even if Bo held a grudge over their sudden break-up, she had too much honor to leave him in enemy hands. She'd help Hale get him free...unless she was too busy protecting Lauren. "My partner, and Bo, they'll come."

"Let us hope. Otherwise, Lauren will not face death alone tonight. Gael has offered me a choice: _la grande mort_, or marriage to him. He tried forcing a ring onto my finger," Justine said, hissing as she tried to straighten her broken digits. "Sadly, his jaw is harder than my fist."

Even though it sent shocks of pain through his shoulders, Dyson laughed. "Bet it was worth it," he said, and Justine had to agree.

They waited quietly for a time, thinking, planning, and hoping that rescuers were on the way.

XXxxXX

Bo woke in darkness, smiling and cool and sated. She flopped an arm across the bed and found nothing but tangled sheets and crumpled pillows; Lauren had gone, leaving Bo to take a much-needed cat nap. Through the closed bathroom door, she heard the shower running.

She considered joining Lauren, but realized that she now had a few minutes alone to explore Dr. Lewis' secret lair and perhaps learn a thing or two. Bo rolled out of bed and wandered naked around the bedroom, snooping for personal items of a revealing nature.

Floor to ceiling windows revealed a beautiful view of twinkling city lights, through reinforced glass thick enough to repel an RPG. Furnishings were simple and coordinated; the pecan wood bed frame matched the dresser, which matched the bookshelves, which held various medical texts and grisly-looking grimoires and some literary fiction.

On eye-level shelves, several framed photos showed Lauren and a young Asian woman (Korean, Bo guessed) embracing at the finish lines of trail races – Mt. Hood, Squaw Peak, Catalina Island and Hell, Michigan. Bo felt a little twinge of jealousy over all this sweaty hugging before noticing that the races were all fifty-milers. Her eyes bulged, and she wondered for a moment whether Lauren was actually insane.

One door down the hallway, Bo found a singleton's premium gym. A large treadmill shared space with a heavy spin bike and a rack of kettlebells. One yellow yoga mat lay centered on the hardwood floor. An iPod dock held a small player loaded with modern classical, reggae, and a few incriminating traces of yacht rock - which sparked further worry for the doctor's mental health.

In the hallway, two more framed photos topped the 'fanatical ultraracer' revelation. The first showed a gangly teenaged Lauren and the Korean girl – then perhaps ten years old – with an older black couple. They were at Disneyland, being hugged by Mickey Mouse. A pink cartoon caption designated this souvenir as the "Lewis Family Vacation 1996."

The second photo held an almost literal bombshell. Lauren, flanked by her parents, stood tall and proud in a United States Air Force uniform before a banner celebrating her 2004 Commissioned Officer Training graduation at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. Two gleaming silver bars on her shoulders marked her as a captain. Bo remembered that much from the movies.

She stared at the picture for what felt like an hour. It made sense, and it didn't. Lauren was headstrong and brilliant, yet took orders like it was second nature. She hated violence, but would set off gas bombs and stab people when necessary. Hell, maybe it did make sense.

Shaking her head to settle all this new information, Bo padded into the living room. The area was bright with moonlight washing through ten-foot windows, bathing tall tri-banded snake plants and taller ponytail palms. The simple layout was very like a catalog ad: two pewter tweed sofas draped with blue cashmere throws, a massive coffee table, and a path to the kitchen.

Bo smiled and stretched her lower back. The ceramic mosaic floor was brutal, but she kind of loved that kitchen. Idling in memories of cold tile and hot skin, she didn't sense Lauren behind her until arms went round her shoulders and draped them both within a soft blue throw.

Lauren leaned down and kissed her neck. Her wet hair smelled of rosemary and pepper. Warm, damp skin and cool metal amulets pressed into Bo's back. Also, there were breasts.

"Been playing detective?" Lauren guessed.

Bo blushed and bit her lip. "Busted. That talk we keep putting off just gets longer and longer. Would you prefer to be called Doctor Huxtable or Captain America?"

Lauren groaned softly, protesting the nicknames. "Are you hungry?"

Bo paused and tried to remember the last time she'd had food. Toasty Bun-Buns for breakfast, cold pizza for lunch? She couldn't remember. As if by mere power of suggestion, she was suddenly starving, hungry enough to fight an orphan for a Hot Pocket.

Still, there were _breasts_, and Bo was just cliché enough to fetishize them in camo togs. "If I lie and say no, will you wear your old uniform and invade me on the couch?"

Lauren shut her eyes and sighed. When she took that answer as a roundabout 'yes, I'm hungry,' Bo further confessed an obscure craving for apple pie topped with sharp cheddar – mostly as an attempt to dissuade Lauren from cooking and put sexy military couch sex back on the menu. Undeterred, the doctor swaddled Bo in the cashmere throw and went off to the kitchen.

"Grab a shower. I'll make you a sandwich," Lauren said. "I need to go check on the Ash and make some calls, then we'll figure out our next moves."

"Wait - we agreed you would cook for me after I catch the murderers. All I know is that one of them was a big, bitey snakeman with a cheap sword," Bo noted. "I flopped."

"We've decided to be in love; this arrangement includes the occasional unconditional sandwich," Lauren said. She smiled and started multi-tasking, heating a skillet, slicing bread and butter, and checking her phone for messages.

Bo watched quietly and felt a weird flutter in her chest. She wanted to stay right here, in this moment, for hours and days and more. She wanted _this_ feeling and _this _woman, for as long as possible. And anyone who cockblocked her shot at super-abnormal happiness with this distance-running cross-species ex-pat military doctor was going to be goddamned sorry.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 14

Lauren wrapped a sheet of tinfoil around Bo's sandwich and tucked it into the hot oven for a bonus crisp-and-melt treatment. She dressed in casual work clothes, stripped the bed, cleaned the kitchen, wrote a sheet of quick notes for Bo, and spared a minute to wonder at her superlative energy level, which she surmised was a proximal power-up linked to Bo's accidental chi overload.

She marveled over how an hour of volcanic lovemaking could rejuvenate her like a two-week vacation. Her body barely even felt sore when, by all rights, she should have been limping along like a car with three flats. Half the things they'd done to each other probably violated the Geneva Convention; the other half would have scandalized expert libertines.

Lauren flexed her hands and smiled. Far from feeling ashamed, she was actually quite pleased with herself for pacing Bo's frenetic need. The Koushang amulet, still heavy around her neck, was apparently a game-changer – and it was still working its magic.

With sustained contact, excess chi had obviously migrated from succubus to human (perhaps through a loose form of induction charge, Lauren reckoned) and the talisman retarded normal dissipation. The resulting sensation partnered an endless caffeine high with hot caramel post-sex haze, a combo which was purely wonderful. She had, objectively, never felt better.

This supposition explained her vigor, but her cheerfulness was entirely due to one thing: Bo was still here, lingering in her home, snooping for clues to her past, and singing Hall & Oates songs in her shower. Despite the trauma that drew them together tonight, Bo seemed comfortable and grounded, solid within place and moment – it finally all felt _right_.

Her words and actions conveyed that Bo wanted more than trauma care and therapeutic sex. If that held true, if Bo would help her stitch together the parts and pieces of a relationship, then Lauren would do her best to channel lightning into the beast, to make it live and breathe and stomp around tall. The villagers would not approve, yet Lauren didn't particularly care.

_Not the most romantic imagery,_ she realized, and quickly forgave herself. _Whatever. My life is more Mary Shelley than Jane Austen, anyway._

She snickered and checked her phone messages again. Serena still hadn't responded with any info about Dyson or Hale, so haranguing her further was pointless. While Bo cleaned up and dressed, Lauren would busy herself by looking in on the Ash, checking the hash function decryption, and taking a few quick samples from the evening's hard-won evidence: two red plastic bags filled with Bo's ruined clothes, which might hold traces of raw venom near her wound sites.

On her way out, Lauren paused and listened to the cross-jet shower pinging water against glass tiles, listened to Bo splashing around and randomly extolling the water pressure or the scent of a sugar scrub. Thrilled as she was to have Bo here, the lively noises sounded alien in these rooms where silence usually reigned.

No one came up here. No one could. The Ash arranged her quarters with a private keyed entrance, spelled to prevent intrusion, and Lauren had never smuggled guests into her fortress. Even those few sweet trysts with Justine had taken place in hotels, away from disapproving Fae like Gael, who joked about 'shucking the help' and gave Lauren sulfurous sneers - open hostility which only increased after she amputated his diseased hand last year.

Some level of general peer disapproval was a given. Lauren was too sensible to imagine fairytale happiness in a human/Fae romance, yet she really wanted to try with Bo, even if that meant compromising her trust with the Ash and risking the protection he had so generously provided. After all, what good was _being_ alive if one never truly _felt_ alive? Whether the Ash would appreciate this logic was an issue for another day.

She gathered the red plastic bags, skipped down the spiral stairs and keyed the elevator for an automatic return to the apartment, all while humming the same Hall & Oates song Bo crooned in the shower. The tune always brought to mind her terminally unhip parents: two academic nerds who germinated hardy happiness, adopted two stray girls, and intentionally infected them with cloud-hopping ambitions for discovery and true love.

"If they could see me now," Lauren said, and smiled despite the impossible wish.

The elevator doors opened on the labs and a shadow crossed her path. She heard the _thwip_ sound of an air gun and felt a sharp pain in her gut. Looking down, she saw the bright orange plunger of a 0.5 cc syringe protruding from her stomach. In the space of a breath, the red bags dropped and the floor melted and everything went slantways.

A gigantic dark figure caught Lauren as she fell. He scooped her up and cautiously cradled her. Though her vision was blurring, she glimpsed his face and recognized him as one of her patients – Fennig, a special detail agent who suffered chronic foot pain. Lauren had fitted him for a bunion splint last month.

The agent looked vaguely embarrassed. He cleared his throat and told Lauren not to worry, that she wouldn't suffer. "I have seen it done. The sword is sharp and does not break," Fennig whispered. "It should not hurt, I think."

He took her to the medical team prepping the Ash for transport and strapped Lauren to a gurney, gave instructions to get her safely to the villa as soon as possible.

"It is best that she does not wake up," Fennig said. "Serena wants no trouble."

The nurses nodded grimly; they understood that to trouble Serena tonight meant ending up broiled or jailed. They rushed Lauren to the service elevator as Fennig checked the small private lift to the doctor's quarters.

The car was gone, returned automatically to the hidden, inaccessible floor. He cursed himself for not jamming the door open, for not removing the key when he had the chance. If Dr. Lewis had company up there, they might come looking for her, and the Ash's medical team was still several minutes away from departure. The succubus could ruin everything, unless he stopped her cold.

Fennig wiped his tired eyes and took a seat with a diagonal view of the elevator. It had been a long, perilous day, and if he was honest, he didn't know why any of this was happening. He didn't hate the Ash, he didn't hate the Morrigan, and he really didn't hate Dr. Lewis. She made his foot feel better. To a four-hundred pound colossus who stood for sixteen hours a day, that relief was priceless.

He wondered why Gorrick and Vinata didn't just exile themselves and make hideous babies on an island somewhere. Why did they have to wreck the whole system? It normally worked pretty well, Fennig thought, for those who weren't crazy or evil. The checks and balances were no more cruel than nature itself, and average Fae like him got along just fine.

Personal feelings like these had to stay private, he knew, as honesty was now a liability. Things were crazy, and speaking up brought punishment. Justine tried talking sense and she got beaten, scorched, and thrown to that deviant Gael for her trouble. What a waste. Fennig wasn't going out like that, especially if the only thing between him and survival was a dead succubus.

He took out his .357 revolver, checked the rounds, and laid the gun on his thigh. As a colossus for hire, Fennig had killed hundreds of Fae over hundreds of years, though he'd never killed a succubus. Come to think of it, he didn't know _anyone_ who had killed a succubus, and he knew many terrible, violent creatures. He shifted in his chair, cocked and un-cocked the gun hammer.

"Worse ways to go than being kissed to death," he mused. "Yup. Many worse ways."

XXxxXX

By the time Kenzi, Hale, and the Morrigan pooled their accounts of the evening, Trick was oddly unnerved, and he retreated to his study for a quiet think. After half a bottle of whiskey, the Dark Fae leader had chilled enough to release Hale from his handcuffs so that Kenzi could attend to his wounds. She issued a stern warning for the Siren to stay quiet, as more whistling meant more pain, but overall, she seemed relieved that this whole debacle wasn't simply an indictment of her management style.

"When your own private guards try to arrest you, it's kind of a blow to the ego, you know? Damn traitors. Bunch of grasping, faithless dogs," she spat, in Kenzi's general direction.

"Praetorian bitches," Kenzi lustily agreed. She pressed a damp bar towel full of ice onto Hale's busted scalp. He shot her a puzzled look, and she shrugged. "Lady has a gun and needs to vent. Let her talk."

The Morrigan downed another shot of Bushmills and shook her head. "As bosses go, I'm not that bad. I mean, sure, you have to pick up my dry cleaning and go down on me once in a while, but I haven't straight-up murdered an employee in years."

"Saw you ice that snake dude tonight," Hale observed. "He was one of yours."

"In name only; his mommy and daddy paid his way into my blade guild. And let's not forget, if I hadn't trailed that scaly backstabber while looking for clues, you would be _dead,_" the Morrigan replied. "I saved you, and your lack of gratitude is bad form on par with your chavvy hats. Seriously, what kind of grown Fae wears a fucking plaid trilby?"

Hale firmed his jaw and said nothing. Kenzi rolled her eyes and dropped the ice pack into his lap. While he was busy gasping, she spoke for him. "Thank you for helping my prideful, fashion-forward friend. Might be hard to believe, but some of us would miss him," she said, and squeezed Hale's arm. "Like crazy, even."

Once his shock had worn off, Hale replaced the ice pack on his head and looked sideways to conceal a grin. The Morrigan graciously smiled and gave Kenzi a good looking-over. She angled against the bar in an alluring pose that _worked_, despite her bruises and trashed wardrobe. Her poise and confidence clearly remained untouched.

"You seem like a smart kid," she said. "Why are you wasting your time with these milquetoast melvins?"

"I go where Bo goes. We've grown fond of the melvins," Kenzi replied, simply and honestly.

"Uh-huh. Did she pledge to the Light and everyone forgot to tell me?"

"Nope. Still kickin' it freelance. The no-fealty thing suits her pretty well."

"For now; she can't live in the DMZ forever. When things get straightened out and your girl is ready to clique up, consider steering her my way." The Morrigan reached into her blouse and produced a small leather bag. She plucked out a tiny, shiny bauble and tossed it to Kenzi. "No strings. Just remember - I can make it worth your while."

Kenzi opened her hand and stared at the small fortune twinkling in her palm. At first sight, the diamond appeared to be a round-cut stone of decent clarity, weighing about four karats. When Hale craned his head around and reached for her hand, Kenzi impulsively popped the rock into her mouth and swallowed it. Hale gaped at her in disbelief, but she looked singularly unapologetic.

"Buys me some time," she explained. "Dude, I can't think about _money_ right now."

"I do like a girl with her priorities in order." The Morrigan snickered and raised her glass in a toast. "Death to Praetorians! They'll not share in our glittering future."

Kenzi gulped down a shot of vodka and tried to ignore the $30,000 bird dog incentive in her stomach. Fortunately, Trick then emerged from his study carrying two ancient, dusty books. He looked particularly tense as he climbed onto his step-stool and opened one book atop the bar.

"What's with the Fae-pedia?" Kenzi wondered. "Did something I said actually make sense?"

"Strangely, yes, but it's the combination of things that has me worried," Trick replied. "The light emission from the Ash probably means his consciousness is active on some level. I think he reached out for help from one of these beings - the Elex."

Kenzi and Hale leaned over the bar as Trick pointed out a sketch. The picture showed a man (in a very broad, two-armed, two-legged sense of the word) whose eyes and hands streamed light. Kenzi immediately nodded and confirmed that was how the Ash looked earlier today.

"That alone isn't necessarily bad. Elex are benign, incorporeal beings – basically just clouds of energy held together by magnetism. They escort organized electrical waves, like information and ideas, between dimensions, between beings of high consciousness," Trick explained. "On rare occasions, the Elex ferry messages to an Ash from their ascended forebears."

Kenzi looked skeptical. "So they're like Twitter for high-powered Fae? And the one inside the Ash, he talked to me because of those crazy strong magnets in my bag?"

Trick shrugged. "It's possible. Maybe the Ash is too weak for the Elex to speak or act without some sort of external boost."

"Normally, they don't interact with humans at all," the Morrigan added. "Tiny little brains and all that."

"The Elex don't communicate with your clan at all, either," Trick noted. "Tiny little hearts and all that."

She cocked a brow and glanced at his southern hemisphere. "You sure you want to compare who has a tiny little what?" she quipped. Trick gave her a surly glare.

"God, why didn't this Elex-thing just talk to Lauren instead?" Kenzi interjected. "She got there _right after_ he started babbling."

Trick took a deep breath and spoke slowly. "Because of their magnetic properties, two Elex can't occupy the same space at the same time… and Lauren may already have traces of one hidden in her mind."

"Oh, please. That's not even _possible_," the Morrigan blustered. "Sure, humans are fine for the occasional rap song or power ballad, but they are not worthy vessels for numinous inspiration."

"From what I was told, the Elex interacted with Lauren by accident. She doesn't even remember it happened, much less what information she absorbed. It's why the Ash took her in, to protect and preserve what the Elex was sent to deliver."

The Morrigan clenched her fist and tapped her pistol against the bar. "How the hell do you know this and I don't?"

"Because I am well-liked," Trick explained. "And because drunk young Fae like to brag to their elders, especially well-connected idiots like Gael. He came in here a few days ago and ranted to me about Lauren for half the night. She cut off his hand - to save his arm, mind you – but he fully hates her."

"Little cocksucker hates everybody," the Morrigan muttered. "Still, if Gael spoke truth, if Lauren has some bright idea trapped in her head, those bloody headaches mean it won't be there for long. _These_ nasty things are looking for her. If they find her, they'll suck it right out."

She scratched one red lacquered nail across the open page of Trick's second book, pointing at a sketch of two dark, flowing robes inhabited by smoke and hungry eyes. One figure wielded a sword with a serrated back, the other a grooved helical knife. The caption read _Dacoits Pramata._ Trick merely bit his lip and gave the group a curt nod.

"Looks like your doctor is bound for the chop," the Dark leader predicted.

On hearing this, Kenzi disregarded the Morrigan's 'no calls' edict and yanked out her phone to ring Lauren's cell. The Morrigan stood and barked a warning, Trick and Hale started arguing with her, and Kenzi barely registered any of it. She turned her back and walked off to a darkened corner, chanting a plea for Bo to answer her call.

XXxxXX

Bo emerged from the shower and called for Lauren. When no answer came, she assumed she was alone and helped herself to a t-shirt and jeans, ankle boots and Lauren's blue leather jacket. Everything fit a bit snug, but it all felt good and smelled familiar and true, like a woman's hair and skin and sweat.

_My woman_, Bo thought. _Maybe. If my luck holds._

The smell of the jacket made her stomach grumble. Hunger led her to the kitchen where a sugary, buttery aroma filled the air. She shut off the oven and removed a tinfoil square parcel, unwrapped it and stood there for a bit, slack-jawed and staring.

It appeared to be an apple pie sandwich, made with grilled cinnamon bread, sliced red and green apples, and melted cheddar cheese. It was even halved diagonally. Bo smiled so wide that her face hurt. She carefully pried loose half of this unconditional sandwich and took a bite.

Her mouth watered like a spray gun. Her knees buckled a little and Bo leaned against the counter. "Holy fuck." She took another bite, then another and another, savoring and cursing by turns until half the magical sandwich was gone and she'd fallen further in love with the chef. She paused to breathe, to guzzle some water and build anticipation for the second half – the better half, now that she knew what to expect, knew just how good it would be.

On the granite countertop, she noticed a yellow sheet of legal paper pinned beneath Lauren's cell phone. The paper was folded in half, the words "Read Me" written on the face. Inside were five neatly printed, bullet-pointed notes:

*I'm in the labs. I took your clothes for testing, so borrow anything of mine and come down AFTER you eat. The little iron key in the elevator is one of a kind so please treat it gently. It's the only way in or out of the apartment. Your sandwich is in the oven. Not your first choice, I know, though I hope it's a viable substitute.

_My first choice was stupid_, Bo thought. _I wasn't aiming this high. _She eyed the apple melt with something approaching lust. She doubted whether it would taste as good if made by someone who didn't care as much. _Does our chi get into the food we make? It's in breath and skin and even in the air, so why not food? Made with love… makes sense._

*Clement and Joyce Lewis teach anthropology and biochemistry, respectively. They are open, spiritual, loving people and I'm very lucky they found me. They would adore you. Little sister Paula Joy (Peej) would be a harder sell. Like Kenzi with me, I imagine.

Reading this made Bo sigh in relief. Whoever raised her, Lauren was cared for and loved growing up, and this was invaluable. Some bio parents are a nightmare. Bo still thanked her lucky stars for Sam and Mary Dennis. She couldn't imagine the kind of horror show bitch she might be without their early influence. As for the little sister issue… _Kenzi's coming around. Just give it time._

*I was commissioned as a captain after five weeks of training because USAF needed MDs in the combat theater. I enlisted because they offered to pay off $250K in student debt. My parents were threatening to take out a second mortgage and I said no. The uniform is long gone. Guess I'll have to rent one?

_You absolutely will. Shit, maybe I'll get one, too…_

*You amazed me tonight. I already knew you to be clever and strong and brave, but after witnessing what you could do (and would not do) to survive, I admire you all the more. However I can help as your abilities develop, you've got me.

Bo swallowed and nodded, relieved. Tonight proved that her growing abilities were volatile beyond previous knowledge. She needed Lauren to help her figure it out, to keep her grounded when all she wanted to do was binge and glow until she floated into the heavens and burst like a skyrocket. It would be a stupendous way to die, but still…dead. _Best to put that off as long as possible._

*Emotions were loose tonight and certain words were used, maybe too soon, maybe in a flip way. No matter. It's true for me, and probably will remain true long past the point of good sense. You've got me. I love you, Bo. Now eat your sandwich and come down.

Bo read the last bit a few times, just mulling it over, letting it settle. Someone loved her. Someone _extraordinary_ loved her, and the astounding happiness this inspired exceeded her every hope. She realized that if she could step up, give herself over to Lauren in the same way, there might actually be more of this feeling ahead. Weeks and months and maybe years of _this_.

She picked up the phone and the remainder of the apple melt and laughed all the way to the elevator. Sure, there were villains to catch and obstacles to surmount, but Bo felt like a kid out of school, rushing headlong toward summer. She keyed the elevator and pushed the button to take her one floor down.

Lauren's phone rang in her hand, showed an incoming call from Bo – which meant Kenzi was finally checking in. She answered just as the lift doors closed. "Hey. You all tucked into your motel bed?"

Kenzi skipped right past her question. "Is Lauren with you?"

"No, she's down in the labs checking on the Ash. I'm heading there now."

"When you see her, just grab her and run like hell," Kenzi said. Her voice sounded broken and frantic. "These murders, the Ash glowing, her headaches – it's all tied together somehow. The brain bandits are after Lauren."

Bo heard the words. She heard the elevator _ding_ as the car arrived at the labs. The doors softly slid open, and she heard the hammer click back on a large revolver.

She looked up and saw the oversized gunman, some thirty feet away, just as the first shot rang out.

TBC


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 15

Bo felt a wet explosion in her left hand as the bullet tore past. She dropped the phone and fell sideways, wedging into the elevator's front corner as another slug hit the wood-paneled back wall. Slow footfalls signaled the gunman's deliberate approach.

Unarmed and justly scared, Bo punched the 'close door' button and hastily torqued the little iron key. Instead of turning, it snapped it clean in two, leaving her with a fistful of Lauren's keys, a dumbfounded expression, and no escape route.

Checking her throbbing left palm, she found only a raw red stripe - a graze - but her precious apple melt had burst like a piñata, littering the floor with sweet, sad rubbish. Bo experienced a flash of nausea, a rotten emptiness that quickly became anger.

_Ruined. They ruin everything. That was mine._

Every time she got a grip on something amazing, fate conspired to steal it away, and that fucking well had to stop. She would _make it_ stop. If fate wanted to get crazy, Bo would show the bitch that while a succubus might be built for pleasure, she can also bring the pain.

_You can't just take what's __**mine**__._

She looked around for an edge, a chance, anything she could work with, and a godsend wandered across her eye line. Just outside the elevator doors sat two red plastic bags containing her ruined clothing. Lauren had hastily bagged the lot, tucking her duds away as fast as Bo could strip them off.

That reckless speed meant there were still knives in her pants waistband and a holstered Ruger .45 inside her wadded shirt. If she could get to them, she'd have a fighting chance. Bo clutched Lauren's heavy, spiky ring of keys. She peeked out at her attacker and he fired, skimming a round through her hair. Heedless, Bo cocked her arm and slung the keys at his face.

Between the smash and the clatter and his rumbling curses, Bo moved. She dropped low and snatched the red bags into the car, rummaged inside for anything with deadly range, and found only the sharp edge of a dagger. She palmed the knife and crouched low.

Angry now, the giant stormed toward the elevator and blindly angled his gun sideways through the breach. He fired a shot just beside Bo's ear and the boom flooded her skull with silence. She focused inside the void, pared herself down to frenzied muscle blooded with hate.

She lunged upward, grabbed the .357 by its hot barrel, and swung her blade across gunman's wrist. A plume of blood splattered onto the ceiling. The revolver thudded to the carpeted floor and Bo ignored it. She dropped her knife.

At this range she didn't need a weapon. At this range, _she_ was a weapon.

Bo gripped the giant's wounded wrist and yanked him inside the elevator, slammed his back against the rear steel railing. He outweighed her by a ton and towered over her like a bear, but to a succubus maxed-out on chi, size really didn't matter.

Pressing her advantage, Bo pirouetted beneath his arm and twisted his wounded wrist until tendons tore and bones cracked. She kicked his kneecaps and stomped his insteps until he knelt before her, gasping in pain. Then, she launched her real attack.

Bo locked her fingers around the giant's ears, pulled him to her mouth and fed with genuine malice, with terrible intent. Her body was already so overripe with power that this influx of high-level Fae energy actually _hurt_, but rage drove her on.

She pulled and pulled until his eyes went pale and his heart flagged, yet she still hadn't plumbed the depths of his chi or her own fury. Bo viciously drew on him again and felt his muscles wilt, felt his bones soften. Her hands were a vise and his skull seemed rubbery, almost fragile. Some dark inner whisper urged her to _squeeze_, just to see what would happen.

_He deserves it. She's gone. They ruin __**everything**__…_

The Fae gunman was dying and Bo's wrath still seemed endless. She thought hurting him would help, but it wasn't working. Killing him wouldn't calm her wild distress, or remedy her ignorance. She knew only that Lauren was in danger – gone, hurt, worse – and she needed answers that a dead giant could not provide.

Reeling and sloppy, Bo ended the feed one slivered breath shy of death. She remembered her mother feeding on Dyson in the police station and recalled Aoife's stated intent: to make Dyson into one of her Thralls, to enslave him. Bo understood the principal, and though she didn't know _exactly_ how to make that happen, she had to chance it.

With some effort, Bo managed to reverse her chi flow and slowly return the giant's stolen life force. He spasmed in her arms and drew a deep, sudden breath. His eyes darkened from white to blue to brown, and red suffused his cheeks. The giant's wounded, twisted wrist looked mostly healed, almost normal again.

He looked up and smiled with docile devotion and Bo knew she had him. If he was anything like Aoife's sycophantic slaveboys, this Fae killer would now live and die by her command. At a minimum, Bo thought, she could make him strip naked and mix her a batch of martinis.

Bo would _never_ want this, however, because her debut Thrall was profoundly unattractive. His blocky body resembled a coffin with hinged four-by-eights for limbs. Sparse black curls dotted a head that looked like an upturned prosciutto ham. Her mother's Thralls were more sleek Gyllenhaals than lumbering Gandolfinis, but Bo had to start somewhere.

She began with a simple, clear command – practically shouted, to overcome the ringing in her ears. "Tell me what you did to Lauren."

He blinked and grinned, shouted back with blunt honesty. "I shot her with a tranquilizer dart and sent her to the villa with the Ash's transport team. The ambulance left about ten minutes ago."

Bo wanted to run straight after them, but what would she be running straight into? She needed more information. "Why? What the hell are your people doing?"

"They are not my people. I fear and despise them," he said. "Fennig stands with you, lady."

He spoke the truth, Bo knew. His energy was cheery and clumsy as a Great Dane puppy. She leaned in close, touched his cheek, and he trembled with pleasure. "Answer my question."

"Gorrick and Vinata are engaged in mutiny," he began. "They used their Dark assassin children to murder Light financial contacts, used the dacoits pramata to drain pertinent knowledge, and they have framed Dr. Lewis for the thefts. Public accounts will hold that a human traitor colluded with the Dark for robbery. In this way, the Morrigan appears corrupt, the Ash looks incompetent, and a new regime rises to preserve order among all Fae."

Bo nodded as if she understood, as if any of this bizarre Fae power struggle bullshit even mattered to her. She summoned her courage, smoothed the angry tremors from her voice. "What will happen to Lauren?"

"As payment, the dacoits require an idea, one concealed within Dr. Lewis some years ago by a kindly Elex. Without the Ash to protect her, the bandits will take her head and empty her mind." He stopped here and made a sad face, awkwardly mirroring Bo's distraught expression. "It should not hurt. I told her – the sword is sharp and does not break. It severs all."

Her eyes closed. She breathed slowly, cautiously, trying to keep control, because _God_, how she wanted to kill him for even saying that. But she needed more from him. "You said they took Lauren somewhere."

"Villa Delamere," Fennig eagerly volunteered, "Justine's family home. Or, it _was_ her home, as Justine is likely dead by now. Gael harbors a thwarted, violent lust for her. Everyone knows that she and -"

"I DON'T CARE!" Bo roared, shaking him by his scarred cauliflower ears. "JUST TELL ME HOW TO GET THERE!"

He shrank away, simpering. "Forgive me, lady, but I only know that the property lies to the northwest, in deep woods. I have traveled there twice inside a van."

"So, what? You didn't look out the _windows_? Didn't see a road marker or _anything_?"

"Our van has no windows. Humans… they stare at us."

Bo gritted her teeth and stepped back, cursing so loudly that she almost missed the sharp sound of a wolf whistle – a summons for attention coming from the cell phone laying forgotten on the floor. Apparently, she'd triggered the speakerphone function when she dropped it. Impatient beyond measure, Bo picked it up and barked at the whistler. "_What?_"

"Easy, sunshine," a woman calmly answered. "All is not lost."

Bo recognized the Morrigan's sharp, urbane tone and felt a chill. "Where's Kenzi?"

"Don't fret; I like your human. She's aces with me. Give Bo a shout out, darling." After a second's quiet, Bo heard Kenzi yelling that she was cool, safe as houses with Trick and Hale.

"Where's Dyson?" Bo demanded.

"How the hell should I know?" the Morrigan fired back.

"Pardon, lady, but Serena took Dyson," Fennig chipped in. "He was jailed with Justine."

Bo clenched her fist and shut her eyes. If the Light security chief and her goons managed to subdue and imprison Dyson, the opposition was better organized and stronger than she'd hoped.

The Morrigan spoke again, now almost matching Bo's exasperation. "Back on point, please. The late Francois Delamere was a Dark gamekeeper. I've hunted around that villa so many times, I could find it blindfolded."

The succubus tried hard to smother the pique from her voice. "Feel like sharing?"

"Never, though I do believe in fair trade," the Morrigan replied. "As I see it, we've both been royally screwed over tonight, and I want to get my revenge on. My baby boy Vex is out of town and I need a wingman. What say we meet at the villa and drop a few bodies?"

_Sounds good to me,_ Bo thought. "I want to get Lauren and Dyson out. But if anyone tries to stop me…"

"Oh, they will. That's the fun part," the Dark leader purred. "I'm sending directions now. See you at the party."

Sure enough, the phone sounded an incoming push notification alert on Lauren's GPS app. The Morrigan exchanged words with someone, and Trick's voice came on the line. "Bo? Before you leave the labs, you'd better scout around for supplies. I think we're going to need a few things."

She listened intently to Trick's explanations and instructions and tore around the labs until she completed his villa raid shopping list. During her speedy search, a loud alarm issued from Lauren's outsized computer system. Bo looked in just as the printer spit out a single sheet of paper covered in dense Cyrillic lettering. Nearby she spied the Ash's open medical files, with a red circle around a brainwave chart snippet from this morning, just about when Kenzi claimed the Light leader started glowing and chirping at her.

_Huh. Lauren believed you, Kenz. Despite everything, she didn't write you off. _Bo folded the printout and tucked it into a back pocket._ She never gave up on me, either. God, please… please let this work. _

Bo armed up with her Ruger, extra clips and a pair of knives. She ordered Fennig to carry the heavy cases Trick requested, and they raced downstairs to Lauren's car. Bo programmed the GPS with directions to Villa Delamere, took a deep breath, and laid on toward the fight.

On the highway, her heavy foot tested the Jaguar's 510 horsepower supercharged V8, and Bo overtook some vehicles so violently that Fennig – hunched in the backseat - braced his hands against the rear doors to keep his shoulders from smashing through the windows.

The Thrall shared Bo's apprehension, and he offered words of support. "Lady, we will rescue Dr. Lewis," he stated. "If you desire her freedom, none can resist you."

Bo glanced at him in the rear view, this worshipful, redwood-necked Thrall who probably wouldn't survive the night. He had a name, possibly a family, a life beyond the tangle of Fae plots and intrigues. Here was a sentient being reduced to a beast of burden, a shield and a bludgeon. Bo needed to see him as just that, nothing more.

"Don't talk," Bo commanded. "You just stand around and look pretty until it's time to rumble."

"Yes, lady."

"Shut-up."

XXxxXX

Dyson heard footsteps approaching and tugged at his chains. Some measure of his strength had returned, perhaps enough to shift, but in his current bindings the transformation would rip his shoulders from the sockets. His captors knew what they were doing with this strappado arrangement. Dyson whispered a warning to Justine, though he doubted whether she even heard. In the dry heat, the dying nymph's breath had faded to an occasional gasp.

The curing room door opened, admitting moonlight and a rush of cool, moist air that felt like a kiss. Two guards entered, dragging a new prisoner – an unconscious Lauren Lewis.

Gael followed them in, dressed to the nines in a fresh tuxedo, with his blond hair combed and neat. The little bastard actually seemed sober. He carefully emptied a large carafe of salt water across Justine's back, then tossed the pitcher to the guards and spat orders.

"Go find Serena. Tell her I'll bring our guest of honor to the main house directly."

Both guards seemed confused by this command, and one spoke up. "But, Elder Vinata said -"

"_Don't question me,_" Gael hissed. "Just fucking _leave_."

The guards hesitated, looked questioningly at each other, but they obeyed. Gael knelt by Lauren near the open doorway. He popped an ammonia capsule and waved it under her nose. She roused suddenly, took in her surroundings, and her face went rigid with fear.

Amused, Gael laughed and leaned closer. He reached into his tuxedo jacket and unsheathed a long, rusty metacarpal saw – a relic once used for battlefield amputations. He tucked the rounded tip under Lauren's quivering chin.

"Time for a reckoning, cutter," he said. "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth… hand for hand."

Gael hopped astride Lauren's stomach and pinned her forearms beneath his knees. He bit the gold and diamond tie clip from the bottom of his empty sleeve and raised his arm, shook it until a stump of gray skin appeared. His hand had been severed cleanly, perhaps four inches above his wrist. A thick leather strap girded his remaining forearm.

Lauren spoke then, her words soft and shaky. "The bacterial infection was spreading and you would have died," she said. "I didn't have a better option."

Gael flicked his truncated arm and a thin, bright knife poked out of his leather gauntlet. He laid the stump across Lauren's throat, held her still beneath the blade edge. "You should have tried _harder_."

Lauren looked like she was about to say something more, but Dyson couldn't hold his tongue. "You're pathetic," he called out, "blaming a human woman for your failings. Lauren didn't cause your loss. From what I heard, that was your own fault."

"I'm sorry, are we talking about me or you? Because from all _I've_ heard, you should get quite the vicarious thrill from this."

"Not my scene." Dyson tugged at his restraints and fire raced through his shoulders.

"It's a broken spirit that can't rejoice at retribution – and this is warranted," Gael said. His mouth twitched and he bared his serrated secondary teeth in Lauren's face. "Justine was to be _mine,_ my father arranged it with her mother, and yet you dared to lay hands on her."

Lauren squinted, offered the barest shake of her head. "I didn't know. She never said…"

"Well, we hadn't actually _told _Justine," Gael admitted. "Before we got the chance, all the high families started gossiping about some suite at The Hazelton where the Ash's ward spent a weekend _shucking my fiancée_."

Gael looked up at Dyson. "You can relate, yes? A keen dog like you can probably smell it – beneath the deer and the fowl and the florid reek of her soap." He leaned sideways and sniffed Lauren's trapped right hand, gave her fingers a slow, probing lick. Gael giggled and smiled.

"It's like a succubus sampler: blood and spit and front and back," he announced. "I'll say this for you, Dr. Lewis, you were comprehensive caregiver. Won't that make a lovely epitaph?"

Gael dropped the saw teeth against the back of Lauren's wrist and drew the blade lightly across her skin, chewing into the dermis and pulling up a stripe of blood.

Dyson growled and shook his chains, tried to catch her eyes so Lauren could have something – anything – to focus on. Lauren clenched her teeth and looked up, past Dyson's face, up to the ceiling where his restraints were anchored. Assessing. Planning. Even as a psychopath set about cutting her apart.

Her bravery made him yearn to act. He had to shift, even if it ripped his arms off. If he could fall forward and get his fangs around Gael's neck… but he didn't get the chance.

Justine moved first. By the time he noticed her, the nymph was standing on one foot, bracing the other against the wall, and delivering a sidelong tackle that drove Gael's head into the floor. She didn't stop there. What little energy the saline splash had given Justine, she employed to grab a handful of Gael's golden hair and repeatedly acquaint skull with cement until he was – at the very least - unconscious.

Lauren rolled onto her feet. She peeked out the door, made sure the coast was still clear, and dragged Gael toward Dyson's legs. "Stand on him," she instructed. "Take the weight off your arms."

Dyson did and immediately felt a surge of relief in his tortured muscles. Lauren picked up the discarded surgical saw and moved behind Dyson, grabbed hold of his wrist chain for balance, and climbed onto his lower back. Before he could even ask what she was doing, he heard the saw rip into wood and figured she was weakening the ceiling joists to pull him free.

Justine lay against the wall, catching her breath and wiping Gael's blood on her black dress. She caught Dyson's eye and gave him a wink, slyly rubbing it in that maybe she was right about Lauren after all. Maybe Bo was right. Hell, maybe the Ash was even right to trust her.

In less than a minute, after depositing two little piles of sawdust on Dyson's back, Lauren hopped down to the floor.

"Help me pull," she told him, and tugged hard on the wrist chain. After a few strong yanks, the steel eyebolts pulled loose from the oak joists and Dyson's arms fell to his sides. The buildup of lactic acid burned like brimstone, but he had the strength to pull his collar chain down and break his ankle restraints without help.

He had a word of gratitude in his mouth that remained unspoken, since Lauren had already turned away from him to help Justine. The nymph was in a bad way: glassy-eyed and feverish, almost down for the count again after punching away her second wind.

She whispered something to Lauren, and when the doctor leaned closer to hear, Justine gave her mouth a soft, dry kiss. With a rattling breath, she sent out one clear word.

"_Run_."

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Lauren shuddered. She sensed the gravity of Justine's warning to flee, but she couldn't comply. The nymph appeared near death – slumped against the wall, barely breathing, skin aflame with fever – and the doctor had no way to help. This seemed to be Lauren's day to watch impotently as people she cared for struggled to survive. If hell awaited her after death, she imagined it would feel like this, a suffocating strait-jacket of inertia.

She asked for a briefing and Dyson provided a blunt summary of what he knew – the coup, the human murders, the frame-up, and the dacoits' quest for some obscure notion allegedly wedged in Lauren's mental bookshelves like an unread paperback.

Surely that part was a mistake; she had no clue what the bandits could want from her. Every innovative idea she'd developed since joining the Fae was the intellectual property of the Ash and the Light. Besides, once inspiration bloomed into reality, dacoits valued it less than rotten fruit.

While Dyson talked, she checked her lab coat pockets and found a few wrapped vitamin melts leftover from her morning rounds. Careful of the blood dripping from her wounded wrist, she stripped the paper from two small tabs and placed them beneath Justine's tongue to dissolve.

Dyson shifted briefly in and out of wolf form to shed his shackles and cuffs. He laid a hand on Lauren's shoulder. "We need to go," he said. "When Gael doesn't show, they'll come back for you."

She looked to Justine, faded and failing after her selfless gesture. The nymph obviously cared for her more than Lauren had known. "I can't just leave her."

Dyson regarded her soberly. "If we stay, the bandits will come for your head and Justine dies anyway, for nothing."

The truth burned, made her want to move, to act in defense of life – her own, and that of her friend. She took Gael's tuxedo tie and wrapped her wrist to stanch the bleeding. The lack of pain and fear owed to the wonderful numbness of shock, a topic younger Lauren covered in her neurobiology dissertation.

To support "_Countering Stressors to Improve Cognitive Facility and Numeracy,_" she synthesized her own drugs, ran four trials with military veterans and first responders as subjects, increased observational cogency and raised positive decision-making outcomes by a third, and still got a poor grade and a lecture from the Miskatonic University examining committee about playing God with the human mind.

Conversely, the U.S. Military saw the value in training brains to disregard stress and cleave to logic, and Uncle Sam wasn't so squeamish about young Dr. Lewis's methodology - but that was another story.

_Why am I thinking about this now? The drugs only worked short-term, _Lauren reminded herself_. _Yet the idea had never fully left her because it felt like unfinished business. Secretly, she'd hoped that the gene typing data she gathered from the Fae would come useful in her own research, but samples from nearly every species in the counties yielded nothing relevant.

_Stop. Why now, you freak? This doesn't matter. Move. __**Move**__._

She stood and peered out the curing room doorway, scanning the grounds by moonglow. Dense black woods flanked a flagstone path set on a gentle slope. An unnatural bluish illumination arced over the hillcrest, strobing in slow winks and pulses. Distant voices chanted in a blurred hum like the droning of bees.

"How many are they?" Lauren asked, gesturing toward the opposition.

"Gorrick, Vinata, Serena, most of Light security. Past that, I don't know." Dyson moved closer, peered over her shoulder. He sniffed the air to smell the enemy, or perhaps to judge whether Gael was telling the truth about her spending the evening with a certain succubus. "Was Bo there when they took you?" he asked.

She turned her head, met his eyes. Dyson didn't look angry or jealous so much as concerned. It was strange, seeing no resentment, no passion in the fiery Fae. "No. Bo was upstairs in my apartment," Lauren replied. "Hopefully, she's still there."

He raised a brow and she responded in kind. They both knew that Bo couldn't stay out of this mess. Lauren edged around him and stooped over the unconscious nymph. "Justine told me about a salt pool at the main house. We have to get her in the water."

Dyson scowled and glanced toward the lit hilltop, the enclave populated with villains. "Everyone up there intends to kill you."

"Yeah, well... sucks to be me." Lauren slipped one arm around Justine's shoulders and another beneath her legs and stood up, lifting the dead weight in an unsteady carry. Though Justine appeared slender and soft, her body was deceptively heavy, densely muscled as a shark. Lauren gave Dyson a look both pleading and impatient. "If you're not helping, then please get out of the way."

He stood silent in the doorway, this stubborn and smug Fae warrior who had never shown her an iota of respect, this erstwhile rival for Bo's love, until Lauren thought he wasn't going to move. Then he nodded – a grudging sanction – and gently took Justine from her arms.

"Fast and quiet," he said, and walked out into the dark.

Lauren shucked her lab coat and crept up the hill path after Dyson. While crouching behind the crest, they could see the rear of Villa Delamere's main house.

The two-story Georgian sandstone sat centered between a long, narrow brick outbuilding, a glimmering indigo pool, and two grassy courtyards with stone benches and heavy rose arbors. The courtyard nearest, to the east, was empty. The blue light and chanting emanated from the west courtyard, at the far side of the house.

Two tall, wiry guards patrolled in circles around the brick outbuilding. They timed their advance with the guards' route, and moved the instant they were out of sight. Dyson hunkered down and duck walked to the stone-edged pool. Lauren followed and together, they eased Justine into the warm, dark water.

She did not revive. Limp and still, the nymph sank slowly and vanished into the gloom. Lauren knew the sharp sting of failure and loss, and understood that she'd fallen short again. Despite all her knowledge, she was not Fae and could not work miracles, even for those who deserved them.

They waited behind pool furniture until the guards passed by again, then sneaked back over the hill toward the forest. Behind them, the western chanting and blue glow intensified as the summoning ritual reached a crescendo.

"Justine said there's a lake and a fishing boat we can take south toward the highway," Dyson whispered. "It's about three miles through the woods, up a steep incline. Can you run that?"

Lauren smiled to herself. She and her kid sister used to kick out twelve miles before breakfast, but that was years ago. "Let's find out."

Dyson nodded, shifted to wolf form and trotted ahead down the narrow path. Lauren jogged after him, picking up speed as her eyes scanned a path through the maze of moonlit trees. Her feet learned the terrain as it changed from sandy soil to slick pine needles. The Koushang amulet bounced against her chest and she reached into the energy reserves Bo had gifted her. She kept her steps light and kept the white wolf in sight as he flashed through the pines.

For the first time since she left Bo's arms, Lauren felt a sense of rightness. This, she could do without fear of failure. She could run all night. She could run to the ends of the earth… and with the dacoits on her trail, she just might have to.

XXxxXX

In a wood near the Villa Delamere front gates, the Morrigan finished explaining her plan and delicately cleared her throat. "If anyone has any questions, comments, criticisms…"

Trick sighed, but gave her a nod. Kenzi and Hale were too tense to speak, and Fennig simply stared at Bo like a besotted hippopotamus. The succubus, however, wasn't keen on ceding operational control to the Dark Fae leader.

"Why do you get to plan this whole thing?" Bo whispered. She pointed at the high stone wall. "I could just climb over and -"

"Kitten, how much experience do you have with asymmetric warfare?" the Morrigan interrupted. When Bo responded with confused blinking, she elaborated. "Centuries before you were an itch in your daddy's balls, I guided ten quirog to victory over a Yeti horde. I led eighteen Hrothguns to drown a hundred blue-faced Celts under North Sea ice."

"You cheated," Trick bitterly muttered.

"Indeed. And I won." The Morrigan aimed her twinkling black eyes at Bo. "Get your kill ratio _bona fides_ in order and maybe you can plan our next bloodbath."

"There won't be a next time," Bo vowed.

"Tut-tut. Never say never." The Morrigan smiled at her, winked at Kenzi, and rapped Fennig on the shoulder. "Come on, Hodor. Take us in."

XXxxXX

Beyond the wall, in the western courtyard, two Light Fae High Elders and a score of followers shouted a final summons to the sky. Blue flares erupted from a large crystal laid at the center of an indecipherable glyph – circles and waves drawn with the fine ashes of rare books – the ancient symbol of the Dacoits Pramata.

The air above the glyph turned hazy and two bodies of smoke coalesced like living fog. The dacoits hovered a meter off the ground, staring at their summoners through eyes of burning coal. Elder Vinata, the Nagi, uncoiled her tail and slid toward them.

"This night, our pact is made whole," she intoned, sibilant and loud. "This night, through your grace, we rise."

One bandit descended to eye-level, reached into his robes and drew a black ridge-backed sword. The other twirled a corkscrew-shaped knife in a vicious, blurry spin. A stereo voice emerged from the pair – words made of cold night air, heard by the ear and felt on the skin.

"_We seek it. Bring it to us."_

"Soon, I swear it." Vinata raised one scaly hand and waved a command. "Fulfill our final need, and we shall satisfy your desire."

Serena and a hulking security agent hauled out the three dead human financiers and laid their bodies on the perimeter of the glyph. The bandits swooped low, grazing Serena's face with hands made of cold mist. She shuddered and stumbled back.

The dacoits floated low over one body and brandished their tools with mechanical apathy, like gourmands clicking silverware over buffet meatloaf. One raised a sword and briskly hacked off Dave Hubbard's head. The other twisted the helical knife up his throat and sucked out a lifetime of accrued knowledge and experience with a wet, pulpy pop.

The summoning circle tightened around the spectacle, watching in hushed awe. Serena felt her gorge rise and excused herself. She strode across the empty front lawn and up the long driveway roofed by red maples. In this private canyon, she lit her hands and wiped fire across her face in a vain effort to wash away the bandit's chilly touch.

One more night of this strange hell and it would be over. Tomorrow, the new order would rise with her as its strong right hand. Tomorrow, Serena would talk to her old friend Dyson and he would finally listen, finally see that she had his best interests at heart. He would finally see how much she cared.

The radio on her hip squawked her name and Serena flinched, fumbled her flames out, and growled a reply.

"_Fennig's here with two prisoners,"_ one of the front gate guards informed her.

"More undeclared stragglers?" she asked.

The guard paused and sniggered into the radio. _"Not exactly. Better come see for yourself."_

Serena set off for the front gate at a leisurely jog. As she neared the pool of floodlight around the security hut, she saw the gate open, saw Fennig walk in carrying two limp, dark-haired women over his shoulders.

"No," Serena said, and then screamed it out loud. "No!"

The gate guards heard her and gaped as their boss – the cool as ice firestarter - ran toward them at full speed, shouting orders. Fennig gently laid his unconscious prisoners on the ground.

"Shoot them!" Serena screamed. "FUCKING SHOOT THEM!"

The guards finally got the message and turned their AR-15 rifles toward the two prisoners – only they weren't there. Bo rolled up and ducked behind Fennig as he grabbed the rifles and jerked them loose, flung them away like discarded toys.

"Do it," Bo whispered, caressing his back with a slaver's hand. A rumble of lusty violence swelled his chest. Fennig pounded each guard on the head with a sledgehammer fist, compressing their spines like paper tubes. They folded and thumped to the ground, dead as stones.

The Morrigan had seemingly vanished, but Bo caught sight of her by starlight - a black-feathered breath, flitting through tree boughs, advancing down the driveway to intercept Serena. The Morrigan fell from the shadows as a sinuous flurry of blades, raking talons across eyes and mouth to stun and quiet the panicked Fae before savagely gouging out her throat.

Serena fell to her knees and tried to ignite her body in a final fireball of rage, but as her blood-fuel sprayed all over the tarmac, she sputtered out like a wet torch. The Morrigan whirled down and stood beside her, kicked her over and grinned as the treasonous head of Light Fae security died.

Bo approached, followed slowly by Fennig, Trick, Hale and Kenzi. This was a clearly effective gambit, to draw out the security leader and remove her from play, to keep the enemy forces inside disorganized and off-balance. Yet, to a man, all five of the Dark Fae's ersatz allies seemed stunned by her casual brutality.

The Morrigan shook a bit of gore from her talons, wiggled them back into manicured, bloody fingers. She looked them over and rolled her eyes. "You bedwetters just witnessed the murder equivalent of a Bach fugue," she said. "If you can't appreciate that…"

"I can," said Bo, straightening her spine and issuing a challenge. "Question is, can you keep it up?"

"Longer than you, sugar pop." The Morrigan smacked her lips and showed her teeth. "I'm burning hate; it's a cheap, dirty fuel, but it never runs out."

Bo gave her a crooked smile. "We'll see."

The two Fae exchanged nods and parted for their respective missions. The Morrigan led Trick, Kenzi and Hale (laden with heavy plastic cases from Lauren's lab) through the front door of the main house, on route to a brightly lit second floor bedroom where they suspected the Ash was kept. Bo took Fennig around the darkened east side of the house to check the low brick outbuilding. The Morrigan recalled it being a catch house filled with sturdy cages, perfect for stockpiling Fae and human prisoners like Dyson and Lauren.

Bo concealed herself behind Fennig as he approached the guards on patrol around the catch house. One raised a hand in a friendly hello and the colossus punched him in the throat. The second guard rounded the corner and Bo spun off a vicious back-kick, burying her boot in his gut.

Breathless, the lanky guard fell to the ground and the succubus dove into his mouth, sucking him dry and filling him up, claiming her second Thrall of the night.

"Give me your keys," Bo ordered, and he nearly giggled with delight as he complied.

She unlocked the door and eased inside, left Fennig and the new guy to keep watch. The catch house was pitch black and smelled unbearably rank. Bo gagged and cursed softly, and called Lauren's name. She took a step sideways and bumped into the bars of a steel cage.

Something stirred in the darkness, breathing shallow, struggling to move toward her. "It's the succubus," a woman's voice whispered. "Bo? Is that you?"

She made like a statue and slipped her finger past the Ruger's trigger guard. "Who's there?"

"Sharon. From the labs, remember? I work with Dr. Lewis."

Bo cringed and kept her tone neutral. "Boston Harpy Sharon."

"Hardly," Guatemala Sharon groaned. "That cunt's up at the main house, nursing the traitors."

"Is Lauren here?"

"She's on the grounds, but they didn't throw her in with us."

Bo gritted her teeth and wished she'd borrowed a flashlight from Trick, since hers was still in SnakeFae Alley along with her totaled car. She fumbled near the door for a lightswitch and clicked it on, but no light came. "Shit. How many are you?"

"From here, I see fifteen, maybe twenty."

"You can see in here?"

"Balam – cat's eyes," Sharon explained. "Some are still unconscious, some are too scared to move. Serena took us because she thought we'd come useful later."

"Look, I want to help, but I need to find Lauren," Bo told her. "If I get you out and leave you the keys, can you free the others?"

"Sure, if I can convince my mumbling lump of a cellmate to perk up and help me."

Bo whipped through the stolen keys, trying each in the cell door lock. She heard another voice then, a feminine rasp murmuring random strings of numbers. "The hell is she doing?"

"Torturing me," Sharon replied. "Abra is cipherion, a very rare and very annoying type of Fae. She can't stop calculating odds. Listen – hey Abra, what are the chances that we'll make it out of this alive?"

"One in 843,945."

"Okay. That _is_ annoying," Bo agreed. Finally, she located the right key and the cell door creaked open. "How you like me now, Abra?"

"One in 721,287."

Despite the time crunch, Bo was morbidly curious to hear more. "Serena is dead and we took out four guards."

"One in 240,102."

"Uh-huh. Did I mention that Trick and the Morrigan are with us?"

Abra was silent for a long beat, factoring in the wild card. "One in 5,741."

"Fuckin'-A," Bo softly cheered. "Where do you think Lauren is?"

Sharon worked quickly in the dark, taking the keys from Bo and opening cell after cell while she spoke. "If they're not keeping her at the main house, she might be locked in the curing room just over the southern hill. I know that's where Gael put Justine and Dyson."

Bo drew a sharp breath and hit the door running. She tagged her Thralls and raced over the hill, down the path and into the open curing room. She took stock quickly: Gael beaten half to death on the floor, sawn ceiling joists and broken chains, and a discarded lab coat.

A smile broke across Bo's face and she felt buoyed, confident, vaguely horny. Outside the door, she found two sets of tracks in the sandy soil – a striding wolf and a long-legged woman who could probably run all night. Bo smacked her Thralls on their asses and the trio followed the tracks into the woods.

"That's my girl," Bo said. "_Mine_."

TBC


	17. Chapter 17

* Didn't mean to abandon the story for so long. Got sick. Like, 'baby needs a Baku pelt' kind of sick. Better now. Onward and suchwise.

Chapter 17

The Morrigan stalked right up to Villa Delamere's immense mahogany front door and rapped out three crisp taps with the iron knocker. She waited patiently, checked her nails, licked and smecked a little sheen onto her lips.

Nearby, hidden amid thick spiral junipers, Kenzi whispered to Hale and Trick. "She's seriously just gonna roll up and knock like a Jehovah's Witness?"

"Well, the end _is _nigh," the Morrigan whispered back. She glanced to her cadre and motioned for silence as heavy steps sounded inside the foyer.

Darkness blocked a tiny circle of light beaming from the door's security peephole. The Morrigan craned her face close to the viewfinder, smiled and waved like the Welcome Wagon delivering a muffin basket. She wiggled one finger until a needle-like talon emerged, thrust the claw through the peephole glass, and yanked it back out coated with fresh blood and gummy white flecks of eyeball. From beyond the door came a muted, guttural scream.

Kenzi gasped and her stomach lurched; she fancied she could feel that little four-karat diamond sloshing around in there, amid the vodka and churning acid. The only thing that kept her from reeling back and vomiting was Hale's reassuring grip on her shoulder.

"Stay close." His breath felt warm on her ear. "I got you."

A scant few feet away, the Dark Fae chieftain reared back and kicked the front door open. The Morrigan snarled something Irish – words Kenzi heard as "_Cácaí nó anbhás_, lads!" – and proceeded to slam rapid murder on every dark-suited guard in sight.

Approaching the doorway, sandwiched between Trick and Hale, Kenzi froze and couldn't shut her eyes. Though she'd watched "Kill Bill" too many times to count, the spectacle of a soignée woman caroming around an elegant great room and ripping entrails from four enormous armed goons shocked and sickened her. This was no slick Zoe Bell stunt or one of Bo's clean, kissyface finales; this was rabid, bestial violence.

Blood flew through the air in thick spurts and fine sprays and all four Light Fae guards fell dead in the space of ten seconds. Panicked and unready, two more security tumbled into the living room. Lean and red-eyed with skin like translucent leather, they sprouted claws and pawed the carpet, spasmodically shifting into some bat-like Fae manimal.

The Morrigan cut short their transformations; she bounded over a sofa and kicked off the stone fireplace. Arcing her clawed feet high and then down, she clamped her talons onto both their necks at once. Her grip secured, she twisted her upper body in a tight 360-spin and torqued her claws until their throats exploded.

Down front of Kenzi, Trick raised his broad medical case just in time to shield them from flying gobbets of skin and bone. The Morrigan righted herself and sauntered over. She shook her hands and feet back to flesh, surveyed her work, and raised a brow at Trick.

"Sloppy," Trick judged, adding a 'so-so' hand waggle.

"You only withhold your approval to hurt me," the Morrigan replied. "That's so small of you."

Trick shook his head and sneered, humoring her. He turned to Hale. "Ready?"

"Damn sure hope so," Hale said. He handed his heavy resin medical case to Kenzi and snickered as she struggled to get a grip.

"Sweaty hands," she mumbled. "Usually only happens when I hear police sirens."

"Hang tight. It's gonna be okay," Hale said. Kenzi nodded, bravely pretending she believed him even as her inner Kenzi was curled in a corner sobbing for mama.

Hale smiled calmly until she relented and smiled back. Holding her gaze, the Siren methodically wet his lips, like a virtuoso musician tuning his instrument. Kenzi gulped and felt pink heat stretch over her cheeks.

"Keep it in your pants, kids," the Morrigan groused. "We're on a schedule."

Hale nodded, clenched his fists, and headed up the stairs beside the Morrigan. Kenzi and Trick hung several steps behind. From the landing, four closed doors could be seen to the left and three to the right.

"West corner," Hale said, pointing right, toward the last door. Bright light spilled through a crack at the threshold.

"Showtime," the Morrigan whispered, gesturing for Hale to take point.

As he crept up beside the bedroom door, each of his compatriots inserted baffled earplugs and gave him the all-clear sign. Hale drew a deep breath and released a sweet, low whistle, a call of hypnotic persuasion.

Directly, the door opened and two Fae dressed in teal medical scrubs emerged, looking dreamy and vacant. One black-clad guard followed them out, dragging his assault rifle on a leash as an afterthought. Kenzi recognized one of the nurses as Boston Harpy Sharon, Lauren's meanest minion. In addition to being snotty, she was evidently a traitor.

Hale lured the trio into the hall where – according to plan – they would be rendered unconscious and stashed out of the way. Unwilling to hit a woman unless given no other choice, Hale launched a haymaker at the male guard's chin and knocked him out cold.

The Morrigan walked between the entranced nurses, clasped one hand about each throat and casually snapped their necks. The two Fae women collapsed to the carpet, and she stepped over them like refuse. Kenzi, Trick and Hale gaped and glowered, and the Siren even bowed out his chest in defiance, but the Dark leader shrugged off their anger.

"What happened to mercy for the unarmed?" Trick demanded, once everyone had removed their earplugs.

"Amnesty is for hippies," the Morrigan replied. "I'm here to kill traitors, and if _that_ lazy bastard was on his feet, he would _help me_." She pointed into the bedroom where the Ash lay on a stripped mattress, hooked to monitors and a ventilator. "I guarantee you five minutes; after that, you're on your own."

Without another word, the Morrigan turned away and flitted down the stairs. She positioned herself near the kitchen entrance – tactically, the best spot to intercept anyone coming in from the busy west courtyard. Hale stood by the stairway banister, looking down on the front door.

Trick and Kenzi opened their cases on the bedroom carpet and removed a dozen glass boxes filled with clusters of Lauren's high-powered medical magnets. They popped the boxes and began flattening the tiny, clingy spheres into layers all over the Ash's body in hopes of rousing him, or the Elex within, to life.

"What was on that paper Bo gave you?" Trick asked as they worked.

Kenzi shrugged. She had briefly scanned the paper while waiting at the villa front gates. "It's written in Russian, but it ain't _Uncle Vanya_. It reads like Lauren talks: chemical-this, hormone-that, and a buttload of numbers. A few stutters here and there." She took the computer printout from her jacket and read random passages aloud. "_Elex… Abra… Ash… The sea is a refuge._ That stuff shows up over and over, all jammed together."

Trick layered the final plait of magnets across the Ash's still face. Kenzi widened her eyes, waiting for her wizened Fae friend to drop some knowledge. "So? What does it mean?"

"How should I know?" he replied. "I'm a barkeeper, not a scientist."

Kenzi looked crestfallen, disillusioned. "But… you know everything."

"Nobody knows everything. No one should."

"You know tons more than anyone I've ever met," Kenzi muttered. "You probably even understood what the Morrigan said downstairs, before she turned those guards into Beatrix Kiddo salad."

Trick leaned over the Ash and gently peeled open one heavy eyelid. Despite the liberal application of magnetic energy, nothing had changed. There were no luminous signs of super-dimensional habitation. He sighed and shook his head. "Cake or death," he said.

Kenzi blinked, bemused and dubious. "_Excusez-moi_?"

"Before she attacked, the Morrigan said the words '_cake or death,_'" Trick repeated. "Like much of her behavior, it made no sense to me."

It made perfect, unsettling sense to Kenzi. While the Morrigan seemed fond of torrential bloodletting and casual neck-breaking, she also appreciated the comedy of Eddie Izzard. Kenzi had a growing sense that the Dark Fae weren't purely monstrous jackholes, just as the Light weren't all cupcakes and kitten whiskers. If the day came when Bo had to pick a side, choosing might not be as cut-and-dried as Kenzi had assumed.

She patted her tummy and thought about the diamond therein, imagined all the comforts she could buy for herself and Bo with that thirty grand…

As she fantasized about a roach-free apartment and new cars and fine clothes, a flare of blue light flashed through the window. She crept over and peeked through the sheer curtains down at the west courtyard. A circle of kneeling, chanting Fae surrounded three beheaded men and two floating smoke monsters. The smoke floaties – presumably brain bandits – took turns mouthing a strangely phallic crystal, blowing it full of shimmering blue light.

"_Oh my shit_," Kenzi breathed, quelling her thirty-third nauseous spell of the night.

Trick peered around her shoulder and eased her back from the window. "They're transferring knowledge stolen from the dead," he explained. "That crystal would go to a logomage for reading and translation."

"Encrypted Fae flash drive, modeled after a porn pecker," Kenzi blandly summarized. "Yeah. That's not weird at all."

Trick frowned. "Many ancient cultures worshipped the phallus as a fount of strength and wisdom."

"Bogus," Kenzi decreed. "If doing _that_ raised your IQ, my slutty cousins would all be smarter than Lauren."

Down in the courtyard, the chanting suddenly ceased and the dacoits levitated into the air, nearly to eye-level with the bedroom window. Trick grasped Kenzi's hand and pulled her to the side, out of sight.

One dacoit drifted near and hovered inches from the window, breathing frost onto the thin glass pane. Dark robes whicked and flowed in the still night air. Red coal eyes blazed as it stared at the helpless and sleeping Ash. The bandit reached out a misty hand, touched the window glass and pushed through it like fog through a screen. It brushed aside the curtain and flicked a small white object onto the bed.

Kenzi had an almost irresistible urge to face the wall and cry like a frightened child. She shivered and made a half-turn until Trick tightened his grip on her sweaty fingers. Kenzi went still, held her breath, made not a sound as the bandit lazily withdrew and floated away. She looked into Trick's eyes and whimpered, and he nodded to confirm they shared the same fear.

"I think maybe I peed a little," Kenzi whispered. "Did you pee? There's no shame in terror-related incontinence."

Trick wasn't listening. He went to the bed and picked up the tiny white projectile, held it up to the light.

In the distance, from somewhere on the grounds, a single gunshot sounded. Seconds later, another shot was fired, and then steady, sustained gunfire cracked apart the pre-dawn silence. In moments, it was over, and quiet fell again.

Kenzi couldn't help it – she leapt toward the window and looked out, saw the dacoits soaring into the black sky and flying south toward the woods. She watched them until they disappeared out of sight, blending into the thin, high clouds. Her only thought was of Bo.

She took out Bo's cell and hit redial, hoping Bo still had Lauren's phone handy and was in a situation where she could answer. The phone rang once…

"How odd," Trick said, and motioned Kenzi over. "What does this look like to you?"

The phone rang a second time. Kenzi approached, touched Trick's hand and angled the sharp, bright curiosity toward the overhead light fixture.

"I dunno," she said. "Some kind of seashell? It's pretty. Shiny inside."

She leaned against the bed, accidentally brushing her hip against the Ash's leg. The moment she touched him, a circuit formed between her and Trick and the Ash and the magnets and the odd white seashell. A wave of white light enveloped the room and Kenzi fell headlong away from herself. For an infinite second, she bounced around inside a time tunnel and walked around in someone else's skin.

Inside that infinite second, Kenzi learned more than she ever wanted to know about Lauren Lewis.

XXxxXX

Bo and her Thralls made good time charging through the forest – perhaps they moved too quickly. After less than ten minutes, they ran into a three-man Light security patrol armed with automatic weapons. Bo skidded to a halt as the Light guards spotted her and raised their rifles.

Fortunately, the succubus had two enthralled paladins willing to place themselves between her and imminent death. "Protect me," she said, and her Thralls closed ranks in front of her. Bo braced herself against Fennig's back and drew her Ruger.

"Fennig?" one security officer called out, raking a flashlight beam across the giant's face. "The fuck are you doing out here, brother? Who's your snatch?"

"Mind your tongue," Fennig rumbled. Without fear or hesitation, he raised his .357 and fired a round right into the lead guard's mouth. "She is my lady."

Bo peered beneath Fennig's beefy arm and fired one .45 slug into a second guard's throat. He stumbled back against a tree and slid down into the straw, gurgling and clutching at his neck. The third guard raised his AR-15 and danced sideways, squeezing the trigger and launching a stream of lead their way. Fennig wrapped Bo in his massive arms and twisted them down to the forest floor.

The tall, wiry Thrall from the catchhouse took most of the bullet spray center mass. He cried out as rounds pelted the body armor strapped across his chest, but he braced his feet wide and rode out the impacts, firing his own rifle in return. The noise was hellish, a cacophony of booms and shouts that only died down when both the Thrall and the third Light guard dropped dead from blind-luck headshots.

Bo glanced sideways at the dead Thrall. She felt a sharp stab of guilt for using him this way, but she didn't have time to write a treatise on all the moral dilemmas inherent to Succubus/Thrall labor relations. Bo clapped Fennig on the back. "Let me up. We gotta keep moving."

"Yes," he agreed, and helped her to her feet. "We must find Dr. Lewis."

"Hey," a familiar voice called softly from the shadows. "I think I can help you with that."

Fennig was already aiming his gun at the voice, and Bo slapped the pistol aside. "Dyson?" she called out.

The shifter stepped out of the trees and onto the moonlit path. He was stark naked, bruised and dirty, but otherwise intact. Bo almost wanted to hug him. Only a few short weeks ago, she would have jumped his bones right there amid the pinecones and redbugs. Tonight, she just smiled at him, relieved he was okay.

"We spotted the patrol a few minutes ago. We were waiting for them to move on," Dyson said. He turned away and gave a sharp whistle. Shortly, footfalls crunched over the leaves and straw and Lauren came into view.

Bo tucked her Ruger away and rushed off the path, intercepting Lauren with a cinching hug and a breath-stealing kiss. She touched her face, smoothed dirt from her cheeks and kissed her again, brusque and sweet, laughing.

"I wish you had waited for me," Bo said, pressing her forehead to Lauren's.

"Me, too." Lauren tangled her hands in Bo's hair. Her chin trembled like she wanted to cry. "You're okay?"

"I'm good. Little hungry," Bo said. "Half my awesome sandwich exploded."

Lauren smiled. "I'll make you another. As many as you want."

Bo eased back and winced. "I broke the key to your apartment. You're de facto homeless."

Lauren blinked, drew a careful breath, and shook her head. "That… blows. But I still love you."

The smile that stole across Bo's face could have disarmed nations; it was pure, crazy happiness. "I'm all caught up now," she said. "I love you, too."

Behind them, Dyson cleared his throat. "They'll be here soon. We're burning our lead time."

Though Bo knew he was right, part of her wanted to smack Dyson for his shitty timing. She laced her fingers through Lauren's and briskly pulled her toward the path. The doctor took a sharp breath and Bo noticed the black tie wrapped around her wrist – and saw the bloodstains on her hand. Lauren hastened to calm her, insisting that she was okay, would be good as new with only a few stitches and a fresh tetanus shot.

"What happened?" Bo asked as they jogged along behind Dyson and Fennig.

"Gael," Lauren answered. "Justine stopped him before he did any real damage."

"Oh." Bo tried not to sound put-out, though the idea of Justine playing hero for Lauren made her teeth grind. "Where is Madame Wonderbra, anyway?"

Lauren gave her a quick, plaintive glance. "Dead."

"I…damn. Sorry. I'm sorry." Bo didn't know what else to say. She wanted to turn around, run back to the curing room and finish beating Gael's head in, complete what Justine had started. Instead she kept moving, held tightly to Lauren's hand. She wasn't planning on letting go anytime soon.

The phone rang in her jacket pocket. She took it out and checked the screen. "Kenzi," she said aloud, and answered on the third ring.

"Good news: I'm with Lauren and Dyson," she said by way of an answer, and waited for an update from her best friend. "Kenz? What's going on up there? Hello?"

The second before Kenzi answered felt like hours.

_XXxxXX_

_It's a clinic near the __shore in Virginia Beach, poorly funded and run-down, but staffed by good people. Nurses and doctors donate time and provide free medical care for those who would otherwise go without. She likes it here. She wants to stay, and she cannot stay._

_S__he's leaving tomorrow, deploying with the Air Force 332__nd__ Expeditionary Medical Group to Balad, Iraq. There's a cake in the break room, and red, white, and blue balloons in the hallway._

_Colleagues advised her to keep her head down. They cracked jokes about running the other way when the shooting starts. They are her friends, but they don't know her very well. The only thing that makes her run is a finish line and a clock, and her fast little sister nipping at her heels._

_They've acted strangely all day. Nervous, anxious, dithering like something bad was about to happen. It made her so uncomfortable that she ducked out of the party early, took a walk. _

_It's not that she isn't scared. She's scared a lot – almost all the time, in fact – but fear lights up her limbic system and gets her mind cooking faster than a microwave beam. It's been this way forever, since she knew how to think, how to understand behavior and consequence, how to circumvent pain. _

_Crying __brought the strap; quiet ones got food, sometimes a cup of milk. Once she understood that her papa was never coming back for her, she became quiet and did as she was told. (He's never coming back.) She ate and drank her fill. (He's gone.) Her stomach did not grumble and her bones grew solid. (He never loved you.) Her golden hair grew long and shone in the sun. _

_When the foreigners came, shopping for a__n orphan to take back to their North American paradise, she smiled and charmed them with broken snippets of English, learned from commercials overheard on the doctors' television._

_Coke is it.__ Crazy for Krazy Glue. Time to make the donuts._

_They paid the money and took her home. They gave her a new name and two passports with bald eagles and maple leaves around her picture. _

_It took almost a year before she felt safe enough to call Joyce Lewis 'm__om.' She worked hard for their approval, wanted to exceed their expectations and earn the love they would have given freely. She knew that love could be taken away at any moment, rescinded and voided like a bad contract. If she banked enough goodwill, maybe they would think twice before abandoning her. _

_Maybe. Always maybe. No guarantee. Nose to the grindstone. Work for it. Earn it._

_A new town __nearly every year. Always looking for schools that could hire two non-tenured professors. Soon, a new baby, soft and yowling, easy to love. She loved the baby, protected Paula Joy from stray dogs and mean boys, made her drink milk and eat vegetables when everyone else in day care got Hi-C and cookies. _

_They ran together every day, through braces and training bras and first dates, all the way to college departures. After, they scheduled races around exams and talked while the miles fell away. She slept with her pregnant GTA. Peej nursed a crush on a married professor. They were the scandal sisters, running parallel lines, chasing the impossible. _

_She stayed in school too long, learned a lot of stuff that didn't pay well right off the bat. Mom and Dad applied for a loan without consulting her and, in a fit of pique, she signed herself over to a sloe-eyed colonel with bourbon breath. He'd read her dissertation and liked her ideas on maintaining homeostasis during extreme stress._

_Her trial subjects were all trained to r__oll with stress and fear, to use the energy rather than fight it. In all iterations, the treatment group drastically outperformed the control group. Her formula works, albeit short-term. Her task, once on the ground in Iraq, will be to devise a lasting method of suppressing stress hormones that suppress clarity and numeracy in most people._

_Not in her, of course. She's not most people. Fear is the __fluffy fill inside her pillow. Cortisol is mother's milk. She'll make it work. It's what she's done all her life; she'll work hard and harder, find the answer eventually._

_Her __party-fugue/casual afternoon stroll is over. In the clinic waiting room, a child stands alone. She goes to see what's wrong. The room is empty; no patients, no staff behind the desk. No one there but this small, barefoot boy dressed in dirty shorts and a t-shirt. It's winter, far too cold for that. She takes off her jacket and wraps him up, rubs his arms until he stops shivering._

_Hey, champ. __Where are your parents? Where are your __**shoes**__?_

_He doesn't speak. He looks into her eyes and she feels a surge of anxiety piped directly from the boy's mind to her own. He's terrified. She calls out for a nurse, for someone to help her get a warm drink and some food for the kid. No one answers. She takes his hand and they walk around the clinic, checking room after empty room until they find everyone._

_Everyone. Two doctors and four nurses and three patients. Standing in a darkened exam room with their noses pressed against the wall. They are all, every one, weeping as quietly as orphans who fear the strap._

_She feels a cold dread wash over her skin like an ice bath. She wants to join them, to stand in the dark and cry. But the boy – who will help him? Someone should help him. She will help him._

_He pulls on her hand and they turn away, walk toward the front exit. She hears a sound and pulls up short, pausing in the hallway. Peeking around the corner, she sees two figures in the waiting room. Not men. Figures. Robes full of smoke, floating. Holding a black serrated sword and a corkscrew knife._

_Run. The sea is a refuge. Run._

_The thought is in her mind, but the thought is not hers. It comes from the boy. He pulls at her hand and white light flares in his eyes. _

_He's not human. _

_He looks like a child and he is not a child. He is… she doesn't even know. She doesn't know. White light pulses in his eyes, leaks from his fingers and tickles across her palm. He's not human. But he is frightened and he needs help. She can help. She will help him._

_She squeezes his hand and they turn down the hallway, run through the back exit and down the empty walkway toward the beach. It's February and freezing. The shore is empty of tourists. She sees only bare sand and crashing gray-green Atlantic waves. She hears the wind and her own breath, the boy's breath, their footsteps pounding the sand. _

_He turns and looks back, she looks, too. They see the floating figures closing, hovering over the boardwalk, backlit by the setting sun. He stumbles. A rash of panic overtakes him__ and she feels it as her own. _

_Light pulses frantic and wild within his eyes. She understands these creatures will kill him. He's tired and scared, feels abandoned and alone. __He's trapped here. Someone was supposed to meet him, protect him, and they never came. They never came._

_She lifts him in her arms, holds him tight and marches into the cold ocean. Waves break around her legs and she wades into the swells up to her chest, holds the not-child above the waterline. _

_The robed figures halt at the breakers. Hovering. Waiting for the cold to wear her down, to make her give in and bring the not-child ashore. The boy that is not a boy clings to her for dear life._

_Time passes. __She can't feel her legs. She's numb from the waist down, the chest down. Her arms are leaden, muscles iced over. Her heartbeat slows. She stares at them, their red coal eyes and sharp blades, and shakes her head. She will not give in. Fear does not always win._

_Sometimes. Often. But not always. The boy relaxes in her arms. Tucks his face against her ear._

_Thank you, he says, with breath and words, in voice._

_He melts in her grasp like sugar in a kettle, dissolves to a spill of white light in the ocean water. She looks to the shore and sees a tall, solid man with dark skin and white clothing. The smoke figures cower away from him. They brandish their weapons and the man does not flinch. He picks up a small white seashell and flings it at them, and they dissipate like steam clouds._

_The white-clad man __takes her from the water. Takes her from her world. Tells her she can never go back, that she has interfered in something beyond her ken and will be forever hunted, marked for torment and death by vengeful, greedy monsters._

_She is silent. It's fantastic. Unbelievable. She does not believe it. Until she calls her parents, her sister, and they do not know her. _

_They don't know her anymore. She is forgotten. Voided and canceled. She is alive, but orphaned once again. Reduced to a valuable yet unloved commodity in a strange world. _

_As before, she learns how to survive. She works hard. Learns how to circumvent pain, how to flourish and earn favor._

_(she does not know that she is not alone, that the boy who was not a boy clung to her so tightly that part of him remains within her, hidden and watchful and waiting to see her idea come to life)_

_XXxxXX_

Bo answered the call on the third ring. "Good news: I'm with Lauren and Dyson," she said. "Kenz? What's going on up there? Hello?"

Kenzi snapped to attention and looked around the room in a full-on panic. "Bo?" Her voice was squeaky and pinched; her throat actually felt _cold, _like she'd stood in the Atlantic for hours during winter squalls.

"They're coming," Trick unsteadily announced. He sat on the edge of the bed, shivering and pale and recovering from their shared walk on the Elex side. "Tell her they're coming."

"Who's coming?" Bo replied. Evidently she had heard Trick's panicky voice.

"The _dacoits_!" Kenzi yelped, suddenly remembering what she saw out the window a few hours (seconds) before. "If that was you shooting in the woods, they're coming for Lauren!"

"Oh, shit."

"Get to the sea," Trick called out while rubbing the chill from his arms. "The sea is a refuge."

"Hello? We're in the middle of the goddamned forest!" Bo yelled back.

"Then run! Run like monkeys on fire!" Kenzi clenched her fist and whined, unable to believe what she was about to say. "Just… don't let anything happen to Lauren, okay?"

"Um… what?"

"Don't, like, _leave her _or anything." Kenzi kicked at the carpet and choked down a giant lump of crow. "She's good people. Watch out for her."

Bo paused for a long moment. "I will," she said. "Believe it."

TBC


End file.
